-^-^ 



•^oo^ 



%■ 






•^" 






^o 









rCu 






..xt 















^'/. 



AS * 









i^ ^^. 









\ 









f ^1 ■ . '-■ 



.^^ 







v-^' 




V) 



■ . V ^ .<^^ 



,^:^ -% 



a\ 






xO <^.. 



V^ 



.^' 






■'/■--. 



v-. 



\^ 



,-yO-', 









^\> * 






•\ 






SOCIETY AND POLITICS 
IN ANCIENT ROME 

ESSAYS AND SKETCHES 



BOOKS BY PROFESSOR ABBOTT 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Society and Politics in Ancient Rome : 

Essays and Sketches n€t$1.2B 

The Common People of Ancient Rome: 

Studies of Roman Life and Literature net $1.50 



SOCIETY AND POLITICS 
IN ANCIENT ROME 

ESSAYS AND SKETCHES 



BY 

FRANK FROST ABBOTT 

Professor of Classics in Princeton Universitv 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1912 






Copyright, 1909, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 



Published September, 1909 
Reprinted September, 1911 

Reprinted April, 1912 
Reprinted December, 1912 



I 




^0 

M. A. P. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The papers which are included in this vol- 
ume have been written at intervals during the 
last ten or fifteen years. Two of them, "Liter- 
ature and the Common People of Rome" and 
"Roman Women in the Trades and the Pro- 
fessions," are now published for the first time. 
The others have appeared in the Transactions 
of the American Philological Association, the 
Arena, the Classical Journal, Classical Philol- 
ogy, Modern Philology, the New England 
Magazine, the Sewanee Review, Scrihner*s 
Magazine, and the Yale Review, and to the 
publishers of these periodicals the writer is in- 
debted for permission to reproduce them here. 
The social, political, and literary questions 
which are discussed in them — the participation 
of women in public life, municipal politics, the 
tendencies of parliamentary government, real- 
ism in fiction, the influence of the theatre, and 
like matters — were not peculiar to Roman civ- 
ilization, but they are of all time, and confront 
all civilized peoples. We are grappling with 
them to-day, and to see what form they took 



viii PREFATORY NOTE 

at another time and what solutions of them or 
attempts at solving them another highly civil- 
ized people made may not be without profit or 
interest to us. The common inheritance of 
difficult problems which we thus share with the 
Romans has led the writer to compare ancient 
and modern conditions in some detail, or to 
contrast them, as the case may be. In fact, 
most of the papers are in some measure com- 
parative studies of certain phases of life at 
Rome and in our own day. It is hoped, there- 
fore, that the book will be of some interest to 
the general reader as well as to the special 
student of Roman life and literature. 

Frank Frost Abbott. 

Peinceton, June 2, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

Paqb 

Municipal Politics in Pompeii . . • . 3 

The Story of Two Oligarchies .... 22 

Women and Public Affairs under the 

Roman Republic 41 

Roman Women in the Trades and 

Professions 77 

The Theatre as a Factor in Roman 

Politics under the Republic . . . . 100 

Petronius: A Study in Ancient Realism 115 

A Roman Puritan 131 

Petrarch's Letters to Cicero .... 145 

Literature and the Common People of 

Rome 159 

The Career of a Roman Student . . . 191 



IX 



X CONTENTS 

Page 

Some Spurious Inscriptions and Their 
Authors 215 

The Evolution of the Modern Forms 
of the Letters of Our Alphabet . . 234 

Index 261 



SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN 
ANCIENT ROME 



MUNICIPAL POLITICS IN POMPEII 

OF the three colleges of officials which 
most towns in Italy show, Pompeii 
had only the chief magistrates, who 
presided over the local senate and popular 
assembly, and the market officials. With the 
functions of these officers and the method of 
electing them we have acquired some famil- 
iarity from a study of Roman epitaphs, but 
most of our definite information on these 
points comes from the model municipal law 
which Julius Caesar drew up the year before 
his death and from the charters of the towns 
of Salpensa and Malaca found near Malaga, 
Spain, in 1861.* But from none of these 
sources do we get much light upon the meth- 

» The bronze tablets containing these last two documents were 
discovered beneath the surface of the ground carefully wrapped 
and protected by tiles. Their condition suggests a romance 
connected with their history which it would be interesting to 
have further light upon. They were evidently hidden to save 
them, and it looks as if we owed their preservation to an over- 
ruling Providence accomplishing its purpose through the dread 
of some tyrant. Did the people of Salpensa and Malaca hide 
their charters to save them, us our fathers in Connecticut did, 
and was Domitian, under whom they were originally granted, or 
Bon:^ one of his tools, the Roman Governor Andrus whom the 

3 



4 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

ods which candidates for town oflSces used in 
securing a nomination and in canvassing for 
votes, or upon the actual state of municipal 
politics under the Roman Empire. For in- 
formation upon these matters we must turn 
to the political notices found on the walls of 
Pompeii. Almost fifteen hundred of these 
have been brought to light in the portion of 
the city already excavated and have been 
published in the great collection of Latin in- 
scriptions or in its supplements. These no- 
tices and other similar announcements, serious 
and frivolous, seem to have been as numerous 
and as offensive to some of the Pompeians as 
bill-boards in our modern cities are to us, for 
an indignant citizen has scratched on a wall 
in one of the streets: "I wonder, O wall, that 
you have not fallen in ruins from supporting 
the tiresome productions of so many writ- 
ers." * It will be remembered that the Ro- 
mans deposited the ashes of their dead by the 
side of the roads leading from the city, and the 
tombstones and monuments which were raised 

people of these two towns sought to circumvent? It is impos- 
sible to answer these questions, but they suggest an interesting 
episode in the struggle for liberty. 

* Admiror, O pariena, te non cecidisse minis qui tot scriptorum 
taedia sustineas, 1904. (All the references, unless otherwise indi- 
cated, are to Vol. IV of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.) 



IN POMPEII 5 

over them often furnished too tempting a lo- 
cation for a political poster to be resisted. 
A monument near Rome bears the inscrip- 
tion: "Bill-poster, I beg you to pass this 
monument by. If any candidate's name shall 
have been painted upon it may he suffer defeat 
and may he never win any oflSce." ^ 

Most of these notices are painted upon the 
stucco of the hpuse walls, as is well known, in 
great letters from two to twelve inches tall. 
Those who wrote them were not members of 
the local senate, but private citizens of Pom- 
peii. This fact points to the participation of 
the common people in the choice of their 
magistrates, a state of things which surprises 
one at first because at Rome, in the reign of 
Tiberius, the election of consuls was trans- 
ferred from the popular assembly to the sen- 
ate. Evidently the municipalities were more 
retentive of republican principles than the 
capital. This inference is in harmony with 
provisions of the charter of Malaca, which 
call for the election of local magistrates in the 
popular assembly. The participation of all 



* Inscriptor rogo te ut transeas hoc monumentum . . . quoius 
candidati nomen in hoc monumento inscriptum fuerit repulsam 
ferat neque honorem ullum unquam gerat. Henzen 6977. 



6 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

the people in the election had an interesting 
effect. It made it necessary for candidates, 
and for friends of candidates, to use every 
means possible to win the support of voters. 
What electoral methods were under the Re- 
public we see clearly enough from Cicero's ora- 
tions in defence of Murena and Plancius, who 
were charged with violating the election laws, 
and from the essay on ** Candidacy for the 
Consulship." They consisted in organizing 
large parties to escort the candidate to and 
from his house, in gaining the support of 
clubs, organized for charitable and other pur- 
poses, in making electoral tours, in giving 
shows, or in using force or money when cir- 
cumstances permitted it. The inscriptions 
from Pompeii introduce us to still another 
and very interesting method of canvassing for 
votes — the use of the election poster. This 
method of promoting the cause of a candidate, 
oy putting encomiums of him on the walls 
where the passer-by can readily see them, 
is not very common with us, and so far as my 
observation goes, has not come into use in our 
city elections until recently, but is very gener- 
ally employed in Europe. 

The Pompeian posters deal with two stages 



IN POMPEII 7 

of the electoral campaign, viz., the nomina- 
tion for oflSce, and the canvassing for votes. 
In a typical specimen of the first class *'M. 
Cerrinius Vatia is proposed for the sedileship 
by Nymphodotus and Caprasia." ^ Another 
inscription reveals the fact that Vatia has 
agreed to stand for office. This change in the 
situation is clear because a certain Verus 
announces his intention to vote for him, by 
writing on a house wall "To Vatia for the 
aedileship Verus Innoces gives his support," ^ 
and such an announcement would hardly be 
made until Vatia had signified his willingness 
to be a candidate. The professio, or official 
registration of a prospective candidate, was 
made in Rome three weeks before the election 
took place; but the intentions of a candidate 
were known long in advance of the professio, 
so that this inscription does not necessarily 
fall within the three weeks preceding the 
election. The nomination to office came from 
a man's neighbors, sometimes in the form of 
individual requests that he allow his name to 
be used, sometimes in their united demand, 
which finds expression in such statements as 

» M. Cerrinium Vatiam aed(ilem) Nymphodotus cum Capraiia 
rog(ant), 207. 

» Vatiam aed(ilem) Verus Imioces facit, 1080. 



8 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

"His neighbors propose Vatia for the sedile- 
ship," * or *'His neighbors nominate Tiberius 
Claudius Verus as duovir." ^ 

The facit inscriptions, if we may so indi- 
cate those in which the verb used is facit, 
which probably indicate an intention to sup- 
port a candidate at the polls, come from indi- 
vidual supporters, groups of neighbors, or from 
organizations. Modern posters are put up 
by political committees in a systematic way 
on any available board or wall. The practice 
was not the same in ancient times. The 
householder had his recommendation painted 
on the wall of his own house, just as citizens 
in our political campaigns display in their win- 
dows the likeness of their chosen candidate. 
This practice of course enables us to make out 
the political sympathies of the several quarters 
of Pompeii in a given campaign, just as the 
lithographed portraits in the windows in a 
particular section of a modern city show us 
who the favorite candidate of the quarter 
is. The recommendations were not neces- 
sarily painted by the householder. In fact the 
actual work was often done by a professional 

* Vatiam aed. vicini, 443. 

'Ti. Claudium Verum II vir vicini rogant, 367. 



IN POMPEII 9 

painter. One candidate, indeed, seems to have 
had his recommendations painted on the walls 
of his supporters' houses at his own expense, 
and in one inscription the four painters who 
did the work for him have immortalized 
themselves by adding their own names and by 
indicating that all the posters of the candidate 
in question are their work: "Messenio nomi- 
nates M. Cerrinius Vatia as sedile — a man 
worthy of the commonwealth. Infantio, Florus, 
Fructus, and Sabinus have painted the an- 
nouncement, doing the work here and every- 
where." ^ In one case even the white washer 
who prepared the rectangular space on the 
wall as a background for the red letters of the 
notice has left us his name.^ 

Most of these inscriptions indicate the de- 
cision or proposed action of some person, but 
in a few cases they are addressed to some prom- 
inent citizen and solicit his support for the 
writer's candidate. So in one case we read 
an anonymous address to a certain Pansa: 
"Pansa, vote for Modestus for the sedileship ! " * 

Near the house of another citizen, Proculus, 

1 M. Cerrinium Vatiam aed. dignum rei (pub.) Messenio rog. 
Scripsit Infantio cum Floro et Fructo et Sabino. Hie et ubique, 
230. ^ No. 222. 

'Modestum aed. Pans(a) fac facias, 1071. 



10 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

where he would see it on going out and com- 
ing in, is painted the inscription: "Proculus, 
do your duty by your friend Fronto!" * Since 
proposing a candidate for office was not an 
official act we are not surprised to find the 
names of women in inscriptions of this class: 
*'M. Casellius and L. Albucius are nominated 
by Statia and Petronia. May such citizens 
always be found in the colony!" ^ This is, by 
the way, one of the few recommendations in 
which the names of more than one candidate 
appear. The formal presentation of a ticket 
for all the offices was unknown. In fact the 
co-operation of two candidates was regarded 
with suspicion. Sometimes we can make out 
who the successful candidates were. In one 
case, for instance, an enthusiastic supporter 
of Proculus announces on a wall after an 
election that " all the Pompeians have voted for 
Proculus." ^ There is no indication that the 
imperial government had begun yet to med- 
dle in the municipal elections, although in one 
instance an effort is made to use the favorable 



^ Procule Frontoni tuo officium commoda, 920. 

' M. Casellium et L. Albucium Statia et Petronia rog. Tales 
cives in colonia in perpetuo, 3294. 

» Paquium Proculum II vir i. d. d. r. p. universi Pompeiani 
fecerunt, 1122. 



IN POMPEII 11 

opinion of an imperial commissioner in sup- 
port of M. Epidius Sabinus who is character- 
ized as "the bulwark of the town, as Suedius 
Clemens the respected (federal) judge con- 
siders him, and worthy of the commonwealth 
on account of his merits and his uprightness 
in the opinion of the senate." * Suedius 
Clemens showed what would be regarded 
to-day as pernicious activity on the part of 
a federal office-holder, because in three posters 
his intention to vote for M. Epidius Sabinus 
is announced. 

The most interesting recommendations, 
however are those which are made by organ- 
izations of one kind or another. Twenty or 
more of these groups figure in the posters. 
Most of them are made up of men engaged in 
the same occupation. The goldsmiths have 
their candidate, the dealers in fruit, the bak- 
ers, the fish-mongers, the fullers, the dyers, 
the barbers, the copyists, the porters, and 
even the priests of Isis. It seems to me haz- 
ardous to assume, as is commonly supposed, 
that these recommendations represent the 
formal action of the guilds concerned. In 

» Defensor coloniae ex sententia Suedi dementis sancti iudicis 
consensu ordinis ob merita eius et probitatem dignus rei pub- 
licae, 768. Cf. also 791 and 1059. 



U MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

many cases, at least, they very likely indicate 
nothing more than the unchallenged opinion 
of a group of artisans or dealers. Possibly in 
some cases an individual has taken the respon- 
sibility of speaking for men of his calling. It 
would seem hardly probable, for instance, that 
the poster **the farmers nominate M. Casel- 
lius Marcellus as sedile" ^ points to the official 
support of Marcellus by the farmers. This 
action on the part of men belonging to the 
several trades naturally leads us to ask what 
the issues were. Negatively it may be said 
that in the posters we find no suggestion of the 
questions which ordinarily arise in a modern 
municipal election. No mention is made of 
clean streets, of paving or public buildings, of 
police protection, or of the water supply. No 
promise is made on behalf of a candidate that 
he will give elaborate games, supervise the 
markets with care, or let the public contracts 
honestly, although all these matters came 
under the control of the local officials, and 
were topics of very lively interest to the aver- 
age citizen in the small towns, as one sees 
clearly from the conversations of the Cumsean 
freedmen at Trimalchio's dinner. What ques- 

* M. Casellium Marcellum aed. agiicolae rog., 490. 



IN POMPEII 13 

tions, then, were uppermost? Apparently 
those of local pride, personal popularity, and 
guild politics. The municipalities were di- 
vided on a territorial basis into curiae, or tribes, 
as one sees from the municipal charters, and a 
strong feeling of solidarity had developed in 
each one of these wards or districts, which led 
to the united support by the citizens of a ward 
of one of their own number for political office. 
To understand this situation it is only neces- 
sary to recall the survival of strong sectional 
feeling found in many Italian towns to-day. 
The fierce rivalry of the several wards in Siena, 
for instance, which finds expression in the 
annual Palio is but one illustration among 
many of the strength which the sentiment of 
local patriotism may take under favorable cir- 
cumstances. Of course candidates who were 
well known and respected had an advantage 
over their less fortunate rivals. The esteem, 
for instance, in which such men as Holconius 
Priscus were held, whose ancestors had been 
honored with municipal office for half a cen- 
tury, or the uprightness of such a candidate as 
Q. Bruttius Balbus, of whom it is said in a 
poster "he will guard the treasury,"* would 

» Hie aerarium conservabit, Eph. Eyigr., I, No. 163. 



14 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

draw men to their support, as soon as their 
names were announced among those of the 
candidates. A reputation for integrity in his 
business dealings naturally improved the 
chances of an aspirant for office. A supporter 
of Julius Polybius recommended him to the 
favorable consideration of his fellow-citizens, 
because "he supplied good bread." ^ 

What motives brought the dyers, fullers, 
and barbers to the support of a candidate 
must be largely a matter of surmise. It may 
have been some trade advantage or some 
promised market concession, or possibly these 
trade groups in some cases were supporting 
their patron, or at least a citizen who had 
served them in the past. In modern times the 
activity which many keepers of inns and wine- 
shops showed in Pompeii in furthering the 
interests of certain candidates would raise the 
suspicion that they hoped to get illicit privi- 
leges from them, but that assumption is 
hardly possible for Pompeii. 

Among the group inscriptions two or three 
are found which deserve passing mention. 
One reads "I beg you to support A. Vettius 
Firmus as sedile. He deserves well of the 

* G. lulium Polybium aed. o. v. f. Panem bonum fert, 429. 



IN POMPEII 15 

state. I ask for your support. Ball-players, 
support him." ^ Other still more astonishing 
recommendations are found in the announce- 
ments: "All the sleepy men nominate Vatia 
as sedile," *'the petty thieves propose Vatia 
for the sedileship," and "I ask your support 
for M. Cerrinius Vatia for the sedileship. All 
the late drinkers nominate him. Florus and 
Fructus painted this notice." ^ We are not 
surprised at the eagerness which Firmus's 
friend shows to win the support of the ball- 
players. They were held in high favor by the 
people. One of them in his epitaph celebrates 
his popularity, and records the fact that he 
had played ball frequently with the emperor.' 
As for the "sleepy-heads," the "sneak 
thieves," and the "heavy drinkers," the sup- 
port of such people is sought to-day by some 
politicians, but they are studiously kept in the 
background for fear of frightening away seri- 
ous citizens. Shall we conclude that the 
Pompeians were less scrupulous or fastidious 
on this point than we are.^ The city was 

» A. Vettimn Firmmn aed(ilem) o(ro) v(o8) f(aciati8). Dignum 
rei publicae. 0(ro) v(os) f (aciatis). Pilicrepi facite, 1147. 

* Vatiam aed. rogant . . . dormientes universi, 575; Vatiam 
aed. furunculi rog., 576; M. Cerrinium Vatiam aed. o. v. f. 
Seribibi universi rogant. Scr(ipsit) Florus cum Fructo, 681. 

• CIL. VI, 9797. 



16 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

a wicked one, and its people were surprisingly 
frank in recognizing the existence of human 
vices and weaknesses, and scholars seem to 
be agreed in regarding these three recommen- 
dations as striking illustrations of Pompeian 
depravity or of Latin frankness in such mat- 
ters. In this conclusion they find confirma- 
tion in the fact that the placard of the *' heavy 
drinkers" was put on the wall by the profes- 
sional painters Florus and Fructus, who, as 
we have noticed above, were working in the 
interest of Vatia. This hypothesis, however, 
seems to me to put too great a strain on our 
credulity. Is it possible that Vatia was the 
candidate of the underworld, and stood for 
a "wide open town".? That explanation 
seems improbable, because some of his sup- 
porters whose names appear in other posters 
were men of standing in the community. 
Possibly these organizations are social clubs 
which have taken humorous names, or have 
good-humoredly accepted a sobriquet given 
them by others, but there would seem to be 
no parallel to such a name in any of the other 
hundreds of guild and club inscriptions which 
have come down to us. It is much more prob- 
able that all three posters are the work of a wag 



IN POMPEII 17 

or of a malicious opponent of Vatia who wished 
to intimate that all the bad elements in the 
city were rallying to his support. The an- 
nouncement at the end of the third notice 
that Vatia's employees, *'Florus and Fructus, 
painted it" would only show a keener sense of 
humor on the part of the supposed wag, or 
would be a more convincing proof of the 
authenticity of the placard in the eyes of the 
passer-by, if it emanates from one of Vatia's 
enemies. This explanation is supported by 
the fact that these three recommendations are 
all found in the same street and, therefore, 
may well be the work of the same person. 
A friend suggests that the same humorous or 
malicious hand was at work in painting the 
inscription quoted above, "To Vatia for the 
sedileship Verus Innoces gives his support," 
and that this supporter of Vatia existed only 
in the imagination of the composer of the no- 
tice. If we accept this conjecture we may be 
sure that the quick-witted Pompeian would 
see the point in the statement that Verus In- 
noces, or "the truly guileless man," was sup- 
porting Vatia in his candidacy for the office of 
police commissioner, especially when he read 
on neighboring walls the endorsements which 



18 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

Vatia had received from the three groups 
mentioned above. 

The tendency of the Roman to drop into 
stereotyped formulae, especially in the in- 
scriptions, is abundantly illustrated in the po- 
litical notices. One would think from reading 
them that the Latin language had no phrases 
of approbation save dignus rei publicae, vir 
bonus, and iuvenis prohus. These three locu- 
tions, with scarcely a variant, are reiterated 
again and again. Recommendations with 
these conventional formulae scarcely suggest 
a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm on the 
part of the writer, but the formulae had the 
merit, which would recommend them to the 
practical Roman, of being so well known that 
they could be abbreviated, to the great saving 
of time and space. Among these recurring 
phrases of high esteem now and then a senti- 
ment is expressed which suggests other than 
patriotic motives on the part of some of the 
voters. Thus a certain Rufinus is asked to ** vote 
for Popidius Secundus and Secundus will vote 
for him," and in other inscriptions the friends 
of candidates are warned to be on their guard. 
The warning is evidently directed against bri- 
bery or other illegal means of securing votes. 



IN POMPEII 19 

After all, the first purpose of a political sys- 
tem is to secure good government. In this the 
Pompeians seem to have been successful. 
The condition of the streets, of the public 
buildings, and of the water works all go to 
show it. This leads us to another consideration 
which is not without interest. The charter 
which Domitian gave to Malaca provided that, 
if the number of candidates who had regis- 
tered their names with the magistrate chosen 
to hold the elections was not large enough to 
fill the required offices, he should of his own 
motion make the necessary additions to the 
list. Thereupon the men whose names had 
been added could make further nominations, 
and the second set of nominees could propose 
other candidates still. This article in Domi- 
tian's charter points very clearly to a growing 
disinclination on the part of citizens to accept 
office, a disinclination which became so great 
that by the close of the second century munici- 
pal officials were picked out by the outgoing 
magistrates, and the choice thus made was 
formally ratified, not by the popular assembly, 
which henceforth has no part in the elections, 
but by the local senate. The reasons for this 
disinclination to hold office, and for the loss 



20 MUNICIPAL POLITICS 

of popular interest in the elections, are vari- 
ous. First of all, a magistrate was called upon 
to contribute generously to the games in his 
year of oflSce, as one can see from the charter 
of the town of Urso in Spain. Furthermore, 
the extravagant municipal improvements 
which many towns introduced in the second 
century of our era left their finances in a hope- 
less condition, and the task of a city official in 
managing them must have been difficult and 
disagreeable. Finally, the central govern- 
ment, through its representatives, assumed so 
many functions which the local government 
had exercised before that the dignity of a mu- 
nicipal office and the interest of the people in 
the choice of their magistrates naturally dis- 
appeared at the same time. Pompeii shows 
no sign of this downward movement. The 
large number of political posters testifies at 
the same time to lively popular interest in the 
elections and to a spirited contest between 
candidates for office. These very posters lent 
a dignity to the municipal magistracies. They 
run from the time of Augustus down to 79 A. D., 
the year of the eruption, and were permanent 
memorials of the esteem in which certain men 
had been held by their fellow-citizens. Like 



IN POMPEII 21 

the lists of the consuls on the walls of the Regia 
at Rome they contained a record, which was 
always before the eyes of the people of Pom- 
peii, of those who had been honored with 
office and of those whom a large number of 
citizens would have liked to see so honored. 



THE STORY OF TWO OLIGARCHIES 

WHAT sudden and radical changes 
time brings upon us! Only a few 
years ago a very clever book ap- 
peared establishing the fact that the Speaker 
of the lower house of Congress controlled the 
political policy of the nation. One could not 
dispute the conclusion. In the palmy days of 
Randall and Carlisle the House ruled at Wash- 
ington and the Speaker ruled the House. The 
country waited to hear his choice of Chairman 
for the Committee of Ways and Means and 
for the Committee on Appropriations to know 
whether he and his advisers had decided to 
give the nation free trade or protection, to 
prescribe an economical or a liberal policy for 
the coming two years. His faithful supporters 
on the floor were rewarded with committee 
assignments which gave them prestige in the 
House and before the people. His open ene- 
mies, when such could be found, or the men 
whose hostility could be neglected, were 

22 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 2S 

shelved in the Committee on Weights and 
Measures. 

How the House has fallen from its high 
estate and the Speaker with it! Who cares in 
these days whether it favors or opposes a judi- 
cial review of the decisions of the Inter-State 
Commerce Commission, whether it proposes 
the placing of hides on the free list or the im- 
position of a duty on them ? The settlement 
of such matters now rests with its lord and 
master at the other end of the Capitol. The 
senators wink at one another, as did the Ro- 
man augurs, when even such a skilful leader 
and clever tactician as Speaker Cannon an- 
nounces his intention to have the House 
treated as a co-ordinate legislative body. If 
the Senate is in a generous mood, by making 
some trifling concessions in the matter of form 
to the conferees from the House, it may allow 
the Speaker to "save his face," as the Wash- 
ington correspondents put it. This gracious 
course it took in the statehood dispute in 1908 
and won the gratitude of the House by its con- 
descension, but concessions on points of seri- 
ous moment a sovereign can hardly be ex- 
pected to make. To the House the situation 
is a fait accompli. The measures which it 



M THE STORY OF 

sends up to the Senate are like petitions to a 
ruler, to be received and enacted into laws 
with radical changes, if the Senate finds some- 
thing of merit in them, or rejected altogether, 
or left unconsidered in committee. That the 
House accepts the situation seems to be clear 
from the loose form in which it leaves impor- 
tant propositions like the rate bill. Why 
spend time in perfecting a measure when the 
real business of legislation is carried on else- 
where.? Why trouble one's self with consist- 
ency, completeness, or constitutionality, when 
another body will settle all these questions as 
seems best to it.'^ And yet the House finds 
useful work to do under the new interpretation 
of the Constitution. The projects which are 
laid before it and the discussions which take 
place in it are published throughout the coun- 
try, and the Senate has an opportunity to learn 
the trend and the strength of public sentiment 
before it takes up a matter for action. It is 
rarely obliged, therefore, to change its attitude 
toward a question on account of an unex- 
pectedly strong popular feeling against its 
course. Furthermore, since the House is car- 
ried along more easily than the Senate by the 
current of public opinion, and since it can 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 25 

take action quickly, inasmuch as it would be 
useless labor for it to take time to perfect its 
measures, the Senate rarely finds it necessary 
to initiate important legislation, but can wait 
until public opinion has been tested through 
the medium of the House. The late Speaker 
Reed is said to have thanked God that *'the 
House was not a deliberative body." Were he 
living now he might express thankfulness or 
regret that it is not a legislative body. 

This elimination of the House from the con- 
trol of the government has narrowed down the 
struggle for supremacy to the Senate and the 
President, just as the death of Crassus in the 
waning years of the Roman Republic brought 
the other two members of the First Roman 
Triumvirate face to face, precipitated a con- 
flict between them, and made the triumph of 
Csesar or Pompey inevitable. This second 
stage in the Senate's struggle for supremacy 
is intensified by a variety of circumstances. 
That the struggle of the Senate for the mastery 
had reached this second stage was brought into 
bold relief during the closing months of Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's administration. He held 
positive views on public questions and in- 
sisted upon them vigorously. Few political or 



26 THE STORY OF 

social abuses escaped his eye, and a fair cata- 
logue of the evils of the day, with remedies for 
them, might be drawn up from his messages 
and personal letters. This passion for reform 
was caviare to so conservative a body as the 
Senate. To make the matter worse the great 
majority which he received at the ballot-box 
made him in a peculiar sense the tribune of 
the people, and in his contest with the Senate 
he believed that public opinion supported him. 
Then, too, as if in anticipation of the future, 
on the night of his election he had announced 
that he would not accept a renomination, and 
thus made it known that the fear of arousing 
enmities which would prejudice his political 
future would not influence his action. It has 
been remarked also that no one of his prede- 
cessors took so active a part in the actual work 
of legislation as he did. Whether this was 
true or not, probably no president intervened 
in legislative matters in so public a way. In 
fact, the element of publicity was one of the 
noteworthy features of the struggle, and drew 
tight the lines of battle between the parties to 
the contest. He made a legislative project his 
own cause, and his personal leadership in the 
fight for a rate bill, a pure-food law, or a Santo 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 27 

Domingo bill, was recognized by both its 
friends and its enemies. It happened, too, 
that most of the issues which arose between 
the President and the Senate were issues upon 
which a deep interest was felt throughout the 
country. 

The present occupant of the presidential 
chair has a very different temperament from 
his predecessor, consequently he is not likely 
to arouse the personal antagonism of the 
members of the Senate by an impassioned 
advocacy of his views, by impatient treatment 
of his opponents, by attempting to control too 
specifically the form which legislation shall 
take, or by asserting in too positive a way the 
rights of the executive branch of the govern- 
ment. This difference in methods of proced- 
ure will probably lessen the acuteness of the 
struggle, and obscure to some extent in the 
minds of the people the fact that a contest ex- 
ists. But President Taft is a man of positive 
convictions, and his views upon matters of 
public interest, like the tariff, the imposition 
of an income tax, Philippine policy, or the 
regulation of interstate commerce may well be 
at variance with those of the Senate. In fact, 
although the intensity of the conflict may vary 



28 THE STORY OF 

from one presidential term to another, a con- 
flict is inevitable when two branches of the 
government are brought face to face as rivals 
for supremacy. What will be the outcome of 
the struggle ? Shall we pass over to an oli- 
garchical form of government, or to a demo- 
cratic empire ? 

One is tempted to turn back in history to 
another great struggle between an ambitious 
oligarchy and a chief magistrate, to the strug- 
gle between the Roman senate and consul, to 
see if it will throw any light on our own politi- 
cal future. The comparison is tempting be- 
cause the Roman oligarchy, like our own, had 
to face a legislative and an executive rival, and 
history gives us in some detail the story of its 
contest with both of its competitors. The 
similar character of the two cases is the more 
striking because in its essence the Roman gov- 
ernmental system was not unlike our own, 
and because the relation of the three contend- 
ing parties was nearly the same as it is with us. 
In their senate and popular assembly the Ro- 
mans had practically a bicameral system. 
Within certain limits bills, after approval by 
the senate, were laid before the assembly for 
adoption or rejection. The two branches of 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 29 

the legislature were independent of each other. 
One was popular in its character; the other 
was a body of picked men, farther removed 
from public opinion. The consul, like our 
president, was an elective officer, and not a 
minister whose term of office could be cut 
short by the one or the other legislative body. 
It would be interesting to compare the cir- 
cumstances which gave the Roman senate its 
ascendency over its legislative rival with the 
corresponding situation in this country, but 
the triumph of our own Senate over the House, 
whether permanent or temporary, is com- 
plete. Our interest lies in the battle which is 
on, not in the contest which is settled, so that 
we shall confine ourselves to a comparison in 
its broad outlines of the struggle between the 
Roman senate and consul and the one which we 
have lately seen and are likely to see in the fu- 
ture, between our own Senate and the President. 

We have already observed in a general way 
that the constitutional relations between the 
oligarchy and the chief magistrate in the two 
cases are similar. This fact will be still more 
apparent if we compare the membership and 
functions of the ancient and the modern body. 

Roman senators did not inherit their posi- 



/ 



30 THE STORY OF 

tions, nor were they appointed to them, but 
they received them by election. This common 
characteristic differentiates the Roman senate 
and our own Senate from most upper houses 
in ancient and modern times, but the choice 
of senators in Rome was not made directly by 
the people any more than it is with us. The 
great majority of our senators are experienced 
politicians, and have held their seats for many 
years. This was true of Roman senators also. 
Many of our senators are rich men; so were 
the Roman senators, and one of the two bod- 
ies could be called a rich man's club as prop- 
erly as the other. 

A still more characteristic point of resem- 
blance lies in the existence of a strong esprit 
de corps in both bodies. Senatorial courtesy 
was as marked in Rome as it is in Washing- 
ton, and made senators stand as a unit against 
the administration when the claims of their 
order or their individual rights or privileges 
were involved. Perhaps this sentiment was 
even stronger in the Roman body than it is in 
our Upper House, for its members consti- 
tuted a class recognized by law, a class with 
power to transmit some of its^ privileges to its 
descendants. In this connection two or three 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 31 

peculiarities in Roman parliamentary pro- 
cedure are interesting. In its palmy days the 
senate kept no minutes, did not require a 
quorum, and did not have motions set down 
in writing. This is a strange state of affairs 
among a people so methodical as the Romans 
and so gifted with political genius as they were. 
It does not indicate a high state of political 
honor among them, for corruption and chi- 
canery were rife in politics, but it is a striking 
testimony to the esprit de corps of the senate. 
Evidently these lax methods of doing business 
had come down from early times, and it had 
never been found necessary to revise them. 
A long experience with them had shown that 
no matter what party advantages or personal 
privileges were at stake a member would ob- 
serve the principles of senatorial courtesy and 
the traditions of the senate. When he elabo- 
rated his motion and set it down in written 
form after the adjournment of the senate he 
could be trusted not to change the essential 
character which he had given to it in his oral 
statement. This feeling of solidarity was 
strengthened in the Roman senate and is sup- 
ported in our Upper House by a long and hon- 
orable tradition, and by noteworthy achieve- 



32 THE STORY OF 

ments for the state. The office of chief exec- 
utive has no such traditional meaning. It 
was the individual consul Cicero who sup- 
pressed the Catilinarian conspiracy, or the in- 
dividual President Lincoln who issued the 
proclamation of emancipation; but it is the 
Roman senate or the United States Senate 
which, by its power to ratify treaties and con- 
firm appointments, controlled foreign rela- 
tions before the birth of a Cicero or a Lincoln, 
and will control them after the brief term of a 
particular chief executive is ended. The cu- 
mulative effect of such a long line of achieve- 
ments cannot be overestimated. Presidents 
may come and presidents may go, but the 
Senate goes on forever. 

We have taken warning from Roman his- 
tory in one respect. In our dread of Csesar- 
ism, popular prejudice has limited the presi- 
dent's tenure of office to eight years, but we 
have not noticed the Roman senator's long 
term of office, and studied its effect on demo- 
cratic government in Rome. Cicero and Ca- 
tulus held their positions as senators for a 
quarter of a century, and their length of ser- 
vice was by no means exceptional. They be- 
came thoroughly familiar with the traditions 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 33 

of the senate, and were always watching to 
maintain and extend its dignity and influence. 
Their familiarity with precedents and with 
the transaction of business, even more than 
their ability, gave them a recognized leader- 
ship in the body to which they belonged. 
They had succeeded another group of experi- 
enced leaders, and would be followed by men 
like unto themselves. They gave continuity 
to the policy of the Roman senate, just as the 
Hales, Aldriches, and CuUoms preserve invio- 
late the traditions of our Senate. There is no 
such element of continuity in the presidency 
any more than there was in the consulship. 
A chief executive with a limited term of office 
scarcely learns where his strength and weak- 
ness lie before he must give way to a successor. 
His attention is centred rather upon the carry- 
ing out of the promises which he has made to 
the electors, upon the preservation of party 
unity, or the furtherance of his chances for 
renomination, than upon the maintenanc<? 
and extension of the dignity of the presidential 
office. The prestige of the position suffers, as 
did that of the consulship, in consequence of 
this difference of purpose which characterizes 
the two contending parties. 



34 THE STORY OF 

We have noticed briefly the similarity be- 
tween the Roman senate and our own in the 
matter of membership and character. Let 
us look at the characteristic functions of the 
two bodies. One source of power which the 
Senate of the United States uses most effect- 
ively in coercing the President is its right to 
confirm appointments. Thanks to this privi- 
lege almost all our federal oflficials are chosen 
by senators, not by the President, and the 
Senate's political influence and its control of 
the administration is thereby tremendously 
strengthened. The Roman senate used the 
same weapon against the consul with like 
effect. Governorships abroad and other im- 
portant appointive offices were given to men 
who were faithful to the senate, and those who 
opposed it suffered for their temerity. A re- 
calcitrant consul of Cicero's day, for instance, 
lost the great prize of the governorship of Asia 
for his rashness in making some political 
speeches against a measure which the senate 
favored. Caesar, too, who opposed the senate 
during his consulship, would have had a forest 
and a marsh for his province at the end of his 
term of office, if the senate had had its way. 
So clearly did Gains Gracchus, the great op- 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 35 

ponent of the senate, understand this fact, that 
he made a determined onslaught upon the 
senate's power to use the offices in rewarding 
its friends and maintaining its prestige. 

At the meeting on January 1, when the leg- 
islative year opened, the presiding consul 
made a statement on the condition of the com- 
monwealth, and laid before the senate the mat- 
ters which he thought deserved its considera- 
tion, very much as our President does in his 
messages. The Roman senate well under- 
stood that nothing discredits an administra- 
tion so completely as to thwart its policy by 
rejecting or shelving its proposals, or by adopt- 
ing them in such a form that their author 
scarcely knows whether to accept the substi- 
tutes or not. In refusing at a late session to 
pass bills establishing a protectorate over Santo 
Domingo, regulating insurance, and in its 
treatment of President Roosevelt's plan for 
the regulation of railway rates, the Senate 
was following a course which its prototype 
followed on many occasions. It makes little 
difference whether the motives which actuate 
a legislative body in such action are patriotic 
or selfish, the chief executive is chagrined, his 
failure is apparent to the country, and the 



36 THE STORY OF 

importance of the law-making body is exalted 
at his expense. 

We had occasion to say something above, 
by way of illustration, of the control of 
foreign affairs by the Roman senate and our 
own. It is an interesting fact that Roman 
tradition and that the Constitution of this 
country gave the popular branch of the legis- 
lature no share in the conduct of foreign 
affairs. So long as we followed our policy of 
isolation the Senate's right to accept or reject 
a treaty was of comparatively small impor- 
tance ; but now that we have become a world 
power, have acquired colonies in remote parts, 
have assumed a quasi-protectorate over our 
neighbors to the south, and have even vent- 
.ured into the arena of European politics, as 
we did in taking part in the Algeciras Confer- 
ence, this function of the Senate acquires an 
added importance, and the Senate is not un- 
mindful of the new chance to increase its 
power which the change in national policy 
has thrown in its way. Its treatment of arbi- 
tration and reciprocity treaties has shown the 
President that it and not he controls our per- 
manent gelations with foreign countries. The 
President's power to negotiate treaties has 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 37 

gone the way of his power to appoint to office. 
It was so in Rome. The consul represented 
the nation in its deaHngs with foreign powers, 
but the senate easily reduced him to the posi- 
tion of an intermediary between itself and the 
representatives of the state concerned, and as 
Roman interests abroad increased, the influ- 
ence of the senate was correspondingly aug- 
mented, and at the expense of the chief exec- 
utive. 

The Senate of the United States is almost 
alone among great legislative bodies in not 
adopting cloture. The history of the last few 
years bears eloquent witness to the advantage 
under the bicameral system enjoyed by the 
body which allows unlimited debate over the 
co-ordinate assembly which limits discussion. 
Perhaps the downfall of the House may be 
traced more directly to its introduction of 
cloture than to any other one cause. A bare 
majority may push a bill through the House, 
but it may fail utterly in the Senate, as did 
the Force Bill, and the Ship Subsidy Bill, or it 
may be exasperatingly delayed or radically 
amended unless it satisfies all the members in 
the Upper House. Consequently a bill, to be- 
come a law, must meet the wishes of the Sen- 



38 THE STORY OF 

ate rather than of the House. This parliamen- 
tary weapon can be used with equal effect 
against a chief magistrate, as the history of the 
Senate during the last few years abundantly 
shows. Strangely enough the Roman senate 
allowed its members the same privilege. On 
a certain occasion, the irrepressible Cato was 
filibustering against an agrarian measure 
which the presiding consul, Csesar, was very 
anxious to pass. Caesar ordered the sergeant- 
at-arms to remove him. Cato was removed, 
but the entire senate followed him from the 
house, and no magistrate ever again attempted 
to limit debate. 

Making use of the tactical advantages which 
we have outlined above — and our Senate has 
the same elements of strength — the Roman 
senate, as we know, reduced the chief magis- 
trate to the position of its minister, and made 
itself undisputed master of the state. Tiberius 
Gracchus, to whom President Roosevelt has 
lately been compared, first ventured to ques- 
tion its supremacy, and the uprising against 
the senatorial oligarchy which he organized 
attained its success in the next century in the 
democratic empire of Julius Caesar. Among 
the immediate causes which contributed to 



TWO OLIGARCHIES 39 

the downfall of the Roman senate, two stand 
out with special prominence, its class prejudice 
and its inefficiency. It represented the wealth 
and the aristocracy of the times. It was 
strangely deaf to public sentiment. It opposed 
popular leaders like the Gracchi and Csesar 
without justice or tact, and failed to notice that 
the tide was setting toward democracy. It was 
chauvinistic in its foreign policy, as our own 
Senate has shown itself at times — in its treat- 
ment of arbitration treaties, for instance — and 
this attitude was not adapted to further the 
interests of the whole empire. Its second 
point of weakness, its inefficiency, was appar- 
ent not so much in its failure to manage t*he 
government well, as in its failure to manage 
itself. One of its chief sources of strength in 
its struggle with its rivals became in the end 
a fatal source of weakness. In the last few years 
of the Republic a dozen instances are recorded 
in which a single member by "talking against 
time" prevented his colleagues from taking the 
action which they desired. It was, in fact, 
the obstructive tactics of Cato on the occasion 
mentioned above which drove Caesar to put 
an end to the intolerable situation by ignoring 
the senate and by carrying his measures in 



40 TWO OLIGARCHIES 

the popular assembly in spite of senatorial 
opposition. This step broke the primacy of 
the senate, and that body never regained its 
prestige. For the sake of completeness we 
have followed the story of the Roman senate 
to the end. It would be rash to predict a like 
outcome at some future day in the struggle 
between the Senate and the President, but the 
fable teaches us that eternal vigilance is the 
price of liberty. 



WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 

SOME day the story of the "emancipa- 
tion" of the Roman woman will be told. 
It will set forth the steps by which she 
gradually freed herself from the mastery of the 
paterfamilias, gained control of her dower, the 
privilege of holding property in her own name, 
and, except for the absence of political rights, 
a more favored position before the law than 
her husband held. I have no intention of 
attempting to tell that story here. My pur- 
pose is merely to bring together a few facts 
from the history of the late Republic, that may 
throw some light upon the role which women 
played in the political life of the Roman people 
during that period. 

Tombstones record the virtues of many 
Roman matrons, and it is easy to see from 
them what the Roman's ideal of womanhood 
was and what he thought properly fell within 
and outside the range of a woman's activities. 
The prevailing sentiment is illustrated by the 

41 



42 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

well-known epitaph on the tomb of Claudia 
outside the walls of Rome: "Stranger, what 
I have to say is quickly told; stop, and read it 
to the end. Here is the unbeautiful tomb of 
a beautiful woman. Claudia was the name 
her parents gave her. Her husband she loved 
with her whole heart. Two sons she bore; of 
them the one she leaves on earth, the other 
she buried beneath the sod. Charming in 
discourse, gentle in mien, she kept the house, 
she made the wool. I have finished. Go thy 
way." Claudia was the devoted wife and 
mother, who gave an air of grace and charm 
to the home life, and skilfully directed the 
affairs of the household. She was the ideal 
matron of the good old days, whose influence 
on public life came from the example which 
she set to others in performing faithfully and 
well the duties which fell to her lot, from the 
respect which her husband had for her judg- 
ment, and from the training which she gave 
her sons. 

But time brought changes with it. Roman 
women never won nor claimed an equal share 
with men in public affairs, but they found 
means, as civilization advanced, to make their 
influence felt more and more directly and 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 43 

effectively in the management of them. How- 
ever, even in the stormy days of early Rome, 
when the mailed hand ruled, tradition is fond 
of recording the large part which women 
played in the affairs of state. It recounts to 
us in the pages of Livy the pathetic story of 
Horatia and her Alban lover, and the heroic 
death of Lucretia, with its tragic results for the 
line of Tarquin. It gives us the story of Tar- 
quinia, the Roman prototype of the notorious 
Catherine of Russia, whose boldly conceived 
plans and whose determination, unweakened 
by a single touch of justice or of mercy, carried 
her husband to the throne. It sketches for us 
the masterful and resourceful Tanaquil, who 
saved the realm for her foster-son, Servius 
Tullius, and directed him perhaps in those 
great reforms which have made his name 
famous in the early history of the city on the 
Palatine. 

It is a pleasant thing to turn from the deeds 
of violence which the names of Horatia, Tar- 
quinia, and Lucretia suggest, and to recall the 
fact that the first woman mentioned in the 
legendary history of the city of Rome was an 
apostle of peace, and a successful one, too. 
When a Sabine people, enraged at the treach- 



44 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

erous seizure of their women at a festival, had 
rashly entered Roman territory, had been 
overwhelmed by the army of Romulus, and 
were face to face with the cruel treatment 
which the primitive practices of war prescribed 
for the conquered, Hersilia, the wife of Rom- 
ulus, in the name of the Sabine wives of the 
Romans, met her victorious husband as he 
entered the city on his triumphant return 
from the campaign, and prevailed upon him 
to pardon her kinsmen and even to make them 
Roman citizens. It is a pleasant thing to re- 
call the fact that Numa, the prototype of the 
righteous, peace-loving king, drew his inspira- 
tion from Egeria, and that her counsel directed 
him in the policy which made Rome for many 
years, as the myth of Numa tells us, a mighty 
influence for peace and harmony throughout 
central Italy. Perhaps in real life there was 
never an Hersilia who prevailed upon her hus- 
band to make peace. The story that Tana- 
quil quieted the people after the death of Tar- 
quin by her clever speech from the upper story 
of the palace may be a pure myth; but the 
Roman of a later day, when the legends of the 
early period grew up, evidently thought these 
situations not improbable, or he would not 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 45 

have made them a part of the history of 
Rome. 

When women do first appear on the political 
stage in historical times it must be confessed 
that the setting is not quite so romantic nor is 
the cause for which they stand so serious as is 
the case with these women of prehistoric days, 
yet the movement which they lead is more 
characteristically feminine. The date is 195 
B. C, and the question at issue a sumptuary 
law. Just after the disastrous battle of Can- 
nae, when Rome needed to use all her resources 
against Hannibal, and when a display of 
wealth by the rich might have stimulated a 
class feeling which would have been disastrous 
in the national emergency, the Oppian law 
was passed forbidding any woman to have 
more than half an ounce of gold, to wear a 
parti-colored garment, or to ride in a chariot 
within the city or within a mile of it, except 
for religious purposes. But in 195 the stress 
of war was over; prosperity had returned; 
women wished to enjoy their privileges once 
more, and succeeded in persuading two of the 
tribunes to propose the repeal of the law. But 
they did not content themselves with this pre- 
liminary move. The bold methods which they 



46 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

used in carrying their plans to a successful 
issue shocked the sedate historian Livy, who 
tells us that the matrons could be kept at 
home neither by persuasion, nor by a sense of 
modesty, nor by the authority of their hus- 
bands. They blocked up all the streets of the 
city and the approaches to the Forum, impor- 
tuning men as they came down to the Forum 
to vote for the restoration of their rights. The 
leader of the party opposed to them was Cato, 
who held display in dress and the new woman 
in like abhorrence. These are the two topics 
upon which he descants in his indignant 
speech against the repeal of the law. He cyni- 
cally asks the women: "Are your ways more 
wiiming in public than in private, and with 
other women's husbands than your own ? 
And yet not even at home ought you to con- 
cern yourselves with the laws which are passed 
or repealed here. Our fathers have not wished 
women to manage even their private affairs 
without the direction of a guardian ; they have 
wanted them to be under the control of their 
parents, their brothers, and their husbands. 
We, by our present action, if the gods permit 
it, are letting them go into politics even ; we are 
letting them appear in the Forum, and take 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 47 

a hand at public meetings and in the voting 
booths/* Cato closes his appeal to the men 
with this gloomy picture of the future: "Pray, 
what will they not assail, if they carry this 
point ? Call to mind all the principles govern- 
ing them by which your ancestors have held 
the presumption of women in check, and 
made them subject to their husbands. Though 
they have been restrained by all these, still 
you can scarcely keep them in bounds. Tell 
me, if you let them seize privileges and wrest 
them from you one by one, and finally become 
your equals, do you think that you can stand 
them.? As soon as they have begun to be 
your equals they will be your superiors." 
Lucius Valerius, the champion of the women, 
replied to this fiery oration of Cato by recount- 
ing the sacrifices which women had made for 
the state in the past, and by asserting that they 
were not now taking a hand in public afiFairs 
for the first time, and that they should have a 
share in the good times which had returned 
to the city. ''Magistracies, priesthoods, tri- 
umphs, insignia of oflfice, the prizes and spoils 
of war may not come to them," he said. "Ele- 
gance in adornment and dress — these are their 
insignia; in these they delight and glory." 



48 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

Two of the tribunes had announced their in- 
tention to veto the repeal bill, and in their final 
tactics the Roman women seem to have antici- 
pated political methods which are not un- 
known to-day. They beset the doors of these 
officials in a solid phalanx, and did not give 
over their demonstration until the tribunes 
promised not to oppose them. The repeal bill 
was passed by unanimous vote in the assem- 
bly, and Cassius Dio, the historian, tells us 
that "the women put on some ornaments right 
there in the assembly and went out dancing." 

From this time on to the middle of the next 
century a dozen or more attempts were made 
to limit by statute expenditure on dress, at 
dinners, and at funerals, but they were all in- 
effective. We may suspect that the silent or 
organized opposition of the women brought 
many of these measures to naught, but history 
throws no light on the point. 

They did protest, however, a century or 
more later when, as Valerius Maximus tells 
us, no man dared take up their cause. The 
members of the Second Triumvirate were 
hard pressed for money in the year 43 B. C, 
in equipping an army for the impending 
struggle with Brutus and Cassius, and pub- 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 49 

lished an edict requiring fourteen hundred of 
the richest women to make a valuation of their 
property, and to contribute such portion of it 
as should be required. The women affected 
by this proclamation at first appealed to the 
sister of Octavianus and to the mother and the 
wife of Antony to enlist their support against 
the execution of this arbitrary measure; but 
meeting with only partial success, as Appian 
in his History of the Civil Wars tells us, 
they came down to the Forum, forced their 
way to the tribunal of the triumvirs, whose 
acts no man dared question, and protested 
vigorously through their spokesman Hortensia, 
the daughter of the great orator Hortensius: 
"Let war with the Gauls or the Parthians 
come," she said, '*and we shall not be inferior 
to our mothers in zeal for the common safety; 
but for civil wars may we never contribute, 
nor even assist you against one another." It 
was Hortensia who enunciated on this occa- 
sion, for the first time in history, so far as I 
know, the principle of *'no taxation without 
representation." ''Why should we pay tax- 
es," she cried, "when we have no part in the 
honors, the commands, the state-craft, for 
which you contend against one another with 



50 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

such harmful results?" Appian informs us 
that "when Hortensia had thus spoken the 
triumvirs were angry that women should dare 
to hold a public meeting when men were si- 
lent, . . . and they ordered the lictors to 
drive them away from the tribunal, which 
they proceeded to do until cries were raised 
by the multitude outside, when the lictors de- 
sisted, and the triumvirs said they would post- 
pone till the next day the consideration of the 
matter." 

We hear nothing more of the concerted 
action of large bodies of women until we come 
to the conventus matronarum^ or "the little 
senate," as the biographer of the Emperor 
Heliogabalus calls it. This body held its 
meetings on the Quirinal, and by its decrees 
settled questions of dress, precedence, and the 
use of carriages. The ancient historians are 
inclined to scoff at the deliberations of this 
assembly, but some modern courts might not 
be sorry to have the troublesome questions of 
court dress and oflScial etiquette decided peace- 
fully by a majority vote of court ladies. A 
feminine critic might even say with some jus- 
tice that the deliberations and acts of "the little 
senate" at this period were as important as 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 51 

those of the senate made up of men. Before 
leaving this branch of our subject it may be 
interesting to recall the fact that, among the 
political posters found on the walls of Pom- 
peii recommending certain candidates to the 
attention of voters, one is signed by two wom- 
en; but women do not seem to have taken a 
very active part in the support of political can- 
didates. 

If we knew the history of the escape of 
woman from her position of tutelage in the 
family, we should probably learn a great deal 
about her influence on public affairs. Unfor- 
tunately we know only the concrete results, not 
the influences which brought them about. The 
betterment in her condition was a natural re- 
sult of the advance of civilization, and possibly 
all the advantages which she had gained by 
the middle of the first century B. C. would 
have come to her even if she had remained 
passive and contented with her position. In 
point of fact much of the improvement in her 
lot resulted from a change in public sentiment 
which found no expression in law. And yet 
there were certain statutes which materially im- 
proved her position, and the fact that we know 
nothing of organized support of these measures 



52 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

by women would seem to be merely an acci- 
dent of history. The vigorous and successful 
attack which we have seen them making on 
a sumptuary law in the second century, and 
their protest against taxation in the first cen- 
tury before our era, make it reasonably certain 
that they would actively support those projects 
of law which would give them a greater meas- 
ure of liberty and happiness in their every- 
day life. The great improvement which 
woman's position in the family underwent 
will be clear if we call to mind her status in 
the early period. Her consent to a marriage 
was not necessary; the matter was arranged 
by the fathers of the bride and bridegroom. 
On marrying she passed under the complete 
control of her husband, who could, with the 
approval of the family council, inflict corporal 
punishment on her, or even put her to death. 
Her property passed into her husband's hands 
and her earnings became his; he could dis- 
pose of his estate by will as he pleased, and, 
under the best conditions, as an heir to her 
husband's property she stood on the basis of 
a daughter, and the inheritance which came to 
her was managed by a guardian appointed 
under the will. In course of time the concep- 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 53 

tion of marriage upon which these practices 
rested underwent a complete change. The 
theory grew up that marriage was a contract 
which, Hke other contracts, required the free 
consent of the two people concerned, and could 
be dissolved if they wished it. As in other 
partnerships, the two contracting parties stood 
on an equal footing; the wife controlled her 
property and willed it as she pleased. Even 
an unmarried woman, by a fictitious marriage 
which was at once dissolved, could secure a 
guardian of her own choice, and through him 
manage her fortune as she pleased. It is sig- 
nificant that the most important of these 
changes, so far as they were brought about by 
legislation, came after the close of the Second 
Punic War, and, therefore, followed closely 
on the repeal of the Oppian law. 

Although history has not left us an account 
of the circumstances under which these laws 
were passed, so that we hear little more than 
has been given above of the united political 
action of women, we do hear much of the great 
influence exerted by individual women under 
the late Republic. To begin with the earliest 
authentic instance of the sort, a woman may 
well be given credit for initiating the great 



54 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

revolution in society and government which, 
beginning toward the close of the second cen- 
tury before our era, worked itself out into the 
democratic empire of Julius Caesar and the 
dyarchy of Augustus, for Plutarch is probably 
right when he intimates that Tiberius Grac- 
chus, the forerunner of the revolution, drew 
his inspiration and the direct impulse to his 
land reforms from the teachings and admoni- 
tions of his mother Cornelia, and from what 
we know of her character it would seem highly 
probable that she trained her other son Gains 
to take up the work of his brother at the point 
where Tiberius left it when he fell a victim to 
his political enemies. She spent her declining 
years in her villa near Misenum. Here she 
was visited by many of the distinguished men 
of the time and kept the memory of her sons 
alive by recounting their deeds and their hopes. 
Through her the cause for which Tiberius and 
Gains died lived after their death, and we may 
well believe that some of the men who carried 
on their reforms went out from this little circle 
about Cornelia. 

In the next century a woman of a far differ- 
ent type made her influence felt in a similar 
way through the circle of brilliant men whom 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 55 

she attracted to her. The salon of Clodia on 
the Palatine and in her villa on the seashore at 
Baise drew together the foremost politicians, 
poets, and orators of the time — men of the 
older generation, like Cicero and Metellus, 
young men like her brother Clodius, the bril- 
liant and erratic tribune, or Cselius, whom 
Cicero calls **the best-informed politician in 
Rome." "The burning eyes" of Clodia, 
which Cicero celebrates in his fierce attack 
upon her, her brilliant wit, her versatile char- 
acter, her skill as a dancer, her abandon and 
bohemianism, her Claudian pride and con- 
tempt for popular opinion are all marks of that 
fiery southern temperament which could find 
no middle course between love and hate, 
which would hesitate for no scruple and be 
thwarted by no obstacle from gratifying her 
desires or satisfying her thirst for revenge, 
which would be as fickle as it would be relent- 
less toward fickleness in others. It is her 
glory and her misfortune that her character 
and exploits have been painted by the most 
gifted poet, the greatest orator, and one of the 
most brilliant wits of her time. She tired of 
Catullus, and he poured upon her all the vials 
of his wrath and scorn. She failed to ensnare 



56 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

Cicero, and she avenged herself upon him by 
driving him into exile and taking his property 
from him. She was jilted and laughed at by 
the once-devoted Cselius, and consequently 
brought a charge of attempted murder against 
him and almost compassed his ruin. Whether 
she deserves the abuse which Catullus heaps 
upon her in his later poems, whether she mer- 
its the epitaph of the "three-cent Clytem- 
nestra" which Cselius puts upon her, or is 
"the Palatine Medea" whom Cicero paints 
her in his defence of Caelius, we may never 
know. At all events she was one of the most 
striking figures of the period and exerted a 
tremendous influence upon the public life of 
her time, upon the fortunes of individual poli- 
ticians, and upon the fate of the Republic, 
and this is the side of her life in which we are 
interested here. It will be remembered that 
it was the primary object of the First Trium- 
virate to break the prestige of the senate. 
This could be accomplished in no better way 
than by robbing it of one of its greatest lead- 
ers and by humiliating him personally. The 
ease against him must be one which would 
appeal to the masses, and the hand of the tri- 
umvirs must not be disclosed in the attack. 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 57 

AH these conditions pointed to Cicero. He 
was the great orator of the senate and a recog- 
nized leader in it. He had exposed himself to 
popular wrath by executing the Catilinarian 
conspirators without granting them an appeal 
to the popular assembly. In Clodius circum- 
stances put in the hands of the triumvirs the 
tool to be used. To accomplish his object, 
Clodius had himself elected to the tribunate; 
he brought against Cicero the charge of put- 
ting citizens to death without due process of 
law, and secured his banishment and the con- 
fiscation of his property. Perhaps Clodius 
was a radical by nature, and perhaps his po- 
litical sympathies or his hope of advancement 
by the triumvirs induced him to make this 
attack upon Cicero ; but the success of it called 
for fixity of purpose, for years of preparation, 
and the surmounting of innumerable obsta- 
cles, and Clodius was erratic and unstable. 
Who or what held him up to his purpose and 
drove him on through every hinderance to the 
accomplishment of it ? Is it not probable that 
Clodia's savage hate for Cicero, who had re- 
pelled her advances, as Plutarch tells us, 
helped to keep her brother true to his pur- 
pose ? Her influence over him was boundless. 



58 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

and, knowing her temperament, we can be 
sure that she would not stop until she had sat- 
isfied her desire for vengeance. This theory 
of the situation is strengthened by what Cicero 
writes to his friend Atticus in the year before 
his banishment of the calls to battle of "the 
ox-eyed one," and by the anxiety which he 
feels during his exile to know what she is say- 
ing and doing. It is confirmed by the vindic- 
tiveness with which she pursues Cicero's wife 
and daughter during his absence from Rome. 
Clodia had a share, then, in delivering the 
first fatal blow to the senate. Senatorial gov- 
ernment would not have survived indefinitely 
and the revolution would have come about in 
time had it not been for her fierce hatred of 
Cicero which made itself felt through her pli- 
ant brother, but her political leadership was 
one of the instruments in the hands of fate 
which put an end to the old regime. One 
woman, therefore, Cornelia, set the revolution 
in motion ; another, Clodia, brought the move- 
ment to a climax. 

The period of the triumvirs saw women 
play a new role in politics. Leaders strength- 
ened their political relations with one another 
by intermarriage, very much as the ruling 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 59 

houses of Europe do to-day, and such mar- 
riages had a profound influence on the course 
of events at several critical moments. The 
theory mentioned above, that marriage was 
a contract which the two parties entering into 
it could terminate at will, lent itself readily to 
the new political methods which have just 
been mentioned. A politician upon some 
plausible pretext could put away his wife, and 
could enter into a new marriage relation more 
consonant with his new political plans. Julius 
Caesar seems to have been the first statesman 
to adopt this political policy systematically by 
marrying as his first wife the daughter of the 
democratic leader, Cinna, and upon her death 
by taking in marriage Pompeia, the grand- 
daughter of Cinna's great opponent, the dic- 
tator Sulla. By this means he came into close 
relations with the leaders of both the great 
political parties. The other most noteworthy 
cases of the sort are those of Julia, Octavia, 
and Scribonia, and they deserve a moment's 
notice. The political compact into which 
Caesar and Pompey entered at Luca in 60 
B. C, known as the First Triumvirate, was 
cemented in the following year by the mar- 
riage of Pompey to Caesar's daughter Julia. 



60 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

Though more than twenty years younger than 
Pompey, her devotion to him, her beauty, 
and her personal charm, won her Pompey's 
affection and respect, and her tact preserved 
friendly relations between her father and her 
husband up to her untimely death in 54 B. C. 
It is a significant proof of her political influ- 
ence over the triumvirs that the renewal of 
their agreement took place the year before her 
death, and that the breach between the two 
members of the combination who survived 
after the death of Crassus began within a year 
and a half after her decease. Pompey wished 
to bury her remains on his Alban estate, but 
the Roman people, in grateful remembrance 
of the service which she had rendered to the 
state and to the cause of peace, insisted upon 
giving her a public funeral and upon burying 
her in the Campus Martins. 

So helpful had Julia been in maintaining 
a cordial feeling between the two leaders that 
on her death Csesar offered his grand-niece 
Octavia in marriage to Pompey, but Pompey 
declined the proposal. Fate had reserved her 
for another political alliance and imposed 
upon her the role of an advocate of peace in 
still more trying circumstances. When Csesar 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 61 

and Pompey passed oflf the stage, their places 
as masters of the state were taken by Oetavi- 
anus and Antony, who watched each other 
with suspicious eyes, as Caesar and Pompey 
had done. By 40 B. C. the bond which held 
them together was strained almost to the snap- 
ping point, but, fortunately, by the treaty of 
that year they were brought together again, 
and the clouds of civil war which had hung over 
the country were for the time dispelled. But 
the soldiers of the two armies had come to see 
the efficacy of political marriages, and insisted 
upon the marriage of Antony to Octavia, who 
was the sister of Octavianus. Antony, with 
the remembrance of Cleopatra still in his mind, 
hesitated, but the soldiery forced his accept- 
ance of the proposal. The part which Octavia 
played from this time on in averting war is so 
well known that it needs no detailed recital 
here. When the powers of the Triumvirate 
expired by limitation at the close of the year 
38 B. C, when Octavianus was suspicious and 
discourteous in his treatment of Antony, when 
Antony had given up all attempts to reach an 
understanding with him, it was Octavia who 
crossed over to Italy and prevailed upon her 
brother to renew the alliance. In the mean- 



62 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

time Antony's relations with Cleopatra were 
well known in Italy and excited great indigna- 
tion against him and sympathy for Octavia. 
Oetavianus planned to augment these senti- 
ments to his own advantage by ordering his 
sister to leave Antony's house where she was 
staying in Rome. This she firmly refused to 
do. Devoted as she was to Antony, stronger 
than her devotion to him was her desire to 
avert a war between her husband and her 
brother and to keep the East and the West in 
harmony. Cleopatra's object, if Ferrero's 
acute analysis of her policy is correct, was also 
political. "She hoped by marrying Antony to 
save Egypt from the common fate of the other 
Mediterranean peoples, the fate of servitude 
to Rome." She had tried to attain her end 
through Csesar, but failing in her plan with 
him, sought to carry it out through Antony. 
It was a desperate political game played by 
two women for the favor of one man. Both 
were beautiful, brilliant, and accomplished 
women of the world. Both had shown them- 
selves to be skilful women of affairs: Cleo- 
patra, in the management of Egyptian inter- 
ests and in the far-sightedness of her policy; 
Octavia, in securing troops and supplies for 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 63 

her husband's Armenian campaign, and in 
cleverly arranging a basis for a compromise 
between Antony and Octavianus when all 
others had failed. The stakes for which Cleo- 
patra played were the secure establishment of 
her dynasty, the independence of Egypt, and 
the upbuilding of a great Oriental monarchy 
in Egypt and Asia. Octavia played to win the 
Eastern revenues, to save Italy from financial 
ruin, to protect the Empire from a possible 
division into two parts, while civil war trem- 
bled in the balance. The people of Rome 
watched the duel between these two women 
with intense interest. Not only the noble char- 
acter of Octavia and the indignities put on her 
appealed to their sympathies, but they felt, as 
they had in the case of Julia, that peace, pros- 
perity, and the integrity of the Empire were 
staked upon her success in defeating the wiles 
of Cleopatra. She failed. Yielding to the 
entreaties of Cleopatra, in 32 B. C, Antony 
sent a message to Rome divorcing Octavia, 
and war followed. 

Another woman sacrificed on the altar of 
politics was Scribonia. Octavianus hastily 
married her in 40 B. C. to secure an alliance 
with Sextus Pompeius, who controlled the 



64 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

Mediterranean, and as precipitately divorced 
her two years later when he felt prepared to 
cope with Pompeius. 

This constant intermarriage between the 
families of leading politicians, which is illus- 
trated by the cases of Julia, Octavia, and 
Scribonia, brought many of these families into 
blood relationship to one another and went far 
to make the ruling aristocracy a close corpora- 
tion. A "new man" had very little chance of 
election to the consulship if he were pitted 
against a Metellus or a Cornelius, who could 
rely not only upon the support of the Metelli 
or the Cornelii, but also upon the many other 
powerful families with whom they were allied 
by marriage. That marriages should be ar- 
ranged largely on political grounds was a 
natural development, given the basis upon 
which the Roman aristocracy rested. This 
aristocracy was made up of those who held 
office, or whose ancestors had held office. 
That fact separated it from the rest of the 
social world and gave it its exclusiveness. 
That fact connected it with what was most 
distinguished in the society and history of the 
past, and conferred upon it the right to highly 
prized privileges, insignia, and marks of social 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 65 

distinction. Social and political ambition, 
therefore, could be gratified by the attainment 
of one object only, political success, and to 
this end men and women devoted their most 
earnest efforts. From this union of society 
and politics each took its color in large meas- 
ure, and by it the character of Roman women 
during the last years of the Republic was pro- 
foundly influenced. What the effect of such 
an alliance is upon politics can be appreciated 
from a glance at English conditions to-day or 
from a study of certain periods of French his- 
tory in which women have played an important 
role behind the scenes in public life. Where 
such conditions exist, the policy of the govern- 
ment is determined by the salon as well as by 
the parliament, and political preferment comes 
largely through social influence. Caesar's en- 
gaging personality, for instance, his dashing 
manner, and his chivalrous bearing counted 
largely in his political success. A Marius or 
a Cincinnatus would have had small chance 
of winning the prizes in public life. Intrigue 
is likely to play an important part under such 
conditions, while revenge and jealousy, per- 
sonal likes and dislikes will color political 
aims and methods. A cursory reading of Ro- 



66 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

man history for the last two decades of the 
RepubHc shows the presence of these charac- 
teristics in it. They come out clearly, for ex- 
anoiple, in the brief analysis which has been 
made of Clodia's share in the poUtics of her 
time. 

The reflex eiBFect of these conditions on 
women was equally noteworthy. They made 
women astute, well-informed, and experienced 
politicians. Their effect is well shown in the 
character and career of Servilia. Her antece- 
dents would naturally incline her to the party 
of reform, since her mother was Livia, sister 
of Marcus Livius Drusus, the tribune of 91 
B. C, who met a violent death because he ad- 
vocated an increase in the size of the senate 
and the concession of citizenship to the Ital- 
ians. With such influences about her in early 
life, we are not surprised to hear of her in 78 
B. C. as the wife of the democratic leader 
Marcus Junius Brutus, who cast in his lot 
with Lepidus in the armed revolt against the 
senate and the SuUan constitution. From this 
time on for a period of twenty-five years she 
was actively interested in politics, and no his- 
tory of this quarter-century is adequate which 
does not take her into account as a political 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 67 

factor. Her first husband, as we have just no- 
ticed, was Marcus Junius Brutus, the radical 
leader of 78 B. C; her second husband, Si- 
lanus, the democratic consul of 62; her half- 
brother was Cato of Utica; her lover, Julius 
Csesar; while her son and her two sons-in-law 
were respectively the conspirators, Marcus 
Brutus, Cassius, and the triumvir Lepidus. 
In this list we have most of the powerful lead- 
ers of the late Republic, and over these men, 
with the possible exception of her first hus- 
band and her brother Cato, she exercised a 
great influence. We know from the Corre- 
spondence of Cicero and from Plutarch that 
many of the moves which they made were dic- 
tated or advised by her. Could we know all 
the facts Servilia would undoubtedly take her 
place as one of the most important political 
figures of the closing years of the Republic. 
Her influence was always cast with the radicals 
except during the years immediately following 
Caesar's death, when the position of her son 
Brutus induced her to lend her support to the 
senatorial party. As the wife of Silanus she 
made her house a democratic centre. It was 
here that Csesar met her. Notoriously fickle 
as he was in love affairs, he continued in his 



68 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

devotion to her to the end. It was probably 
her remarkable intellectual qualities, and per- 
haps her charm of manner, rather than her 
beauty, which kept him constant. As a mark 
of his admiration he presented her with a pearl 
in 59 B. C, which, according to Suetonius, 
was valued at a quarter of a million dollars. 
It is significant that this gift was made during 
the year of Caesar's first consulship, in which 
he brought in his first great reform bills and 
his measures in favor of his two colleagues in 
the newly formed Triumvirate, Pompey and 
Crassus. Servilia was in a position to influ- 
ence Caesar, therefore, at the very beginning of 
his active career. That she used it effectively 
is clear enough from a covert reference in one 
of Cicero's Letters of this year to a sudden 
change in Caesar's policy in the affair of the 
notorious informer Vettius, a change which, 
from Cicero's words, we should naturally 
attribute to Servilia. Caesar's intimate rela- 
tions with her probably continued from this 
time up to his death, and it would be of great 
interest to know what part of his policy was 
suggested by her, and how much he owed to 
her advice and to her social and political in- 
fluence in carrying it out successfully. Caesar 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 69 

was a skilful, resourceful politician and did not 
need the open assistance of Servilia, so that 
contemporary accounts are silent on this point. 
But with his death the situation changed. 
The ** liberators," as Csesar's assassins called 
themselves, were without purpose or plans. 
As Cicero says in the light of the murder and 
of the helplessness of the conspirators after its 
accomplishment: "Our courage has been that 
of men; our plans, those of children." The 
party was without a leader and without organ- 
ization. Of the conspirators, Decimus Bru- 
tus, Cimber, and Trebonius gladly seized the 
pretext of taking up their provinces to hurry 
away from Rome. Marcus Brutus and Cas- 
sius shut themselves up in their houses in Rome 
until, from fear of the mob, they thought it 
wiser to withdraw from the city. Cicero was 
completely disheartened at the lack of fore- 
sight and concerted action which the move- 
ments of the conspirators showed, and retired 
into the country. The republican cause was 
left without a single leader of weight in the 
capital. It was this situation, and the dan- 
ger threatening her son Brutus which forced 
Servilia to come out openly as one of the lead- 
ers of the senatorial party. It must have been 



70 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

a bitter thing for her to join with those who 
had murdered Caesar, but her son Brutus was 
of the number, and that fact constrained her. 
The tragedy of the situation would be brought 
home to her still more keenly if Caesar was the 
father of Brutus, as some of the ancient writers 
believed. With Marcus Brutus and Cassius, 
upon whose military operations in the East 
the success of the republicans depended, Ser- 
vilia was in constant communication, and they 
turned to her so frequently for advice as to 
exasperate Cicero, who seemed to find her 
policy too often determined by a desire rather 
to protect her son than to further the interests 
of the party. In like manner Cicero thought 
it incumbent on himself to oppose her vigor- 
ously when she tried to prevent the senate 
from declaring her son-in-law Lepidus a pub- 
lic enemy. It was at her house that a meeting 
of Cicero and the conspirators who were still 
in Rome was held, and it was she who directed 
the deliberations of the gathering and asked 
each one present to state his view of the situa- 
tion. She was present, too, at the eventful 
council of war held at Antium in June, 44 
B. C, shortly before the departure of Marcus 
Brutus and Cassius for the East, and she took 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 71 

a leading part in the discussion there. Her 
political influence at this time is well shown 
by the promise which she made on that occa- 
sion to bring the senate to repeal one of its de- 
crees to which the conspirators objected. 
Probably no one of the men present could 
have made such an undertaking with any hope 
of success. 

This meeting was also attended by her 
daughter TertuUa and her daughter-in-law 
Porcia. The marriage of her son to the last- 
mentioned woman a few years before was a 
bitter disappointment to Servilia. Porcia was 
the daughter of Cato, who had been unweary- 
ing in his attacks on Csesar and the other two 
members of the triumvirate, and the widow 
of Bibulus, Csesar's stubborn aristocratic col- 
league in the consulship of 59 B. C. Porcia 
was as uncompromising as her father, as de- 
voted to the aristocratic tradition as her first 
husband, and Servilia viewed with anxiety the 
influence of such a wife upon the weak and 
impressionable Brutus. If the latter part of 
Brutus's career, which is so hard to under- 
stand, were analyzed in th^ light of the influ- 
ence exerted upon him by Servilia and Porcia, 
much of his vacillation and inconsistency 



72 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

could be explained. In the years immedi- 
ately preceding Caesar's death, the mother and 
the wife can never have worked in harmony 
in directing the political action of Brutus, and 
we can help our understanding of his course 
by taking into account at one moment the 
dominance of Servilia, at another, that of 
Porcia. So, for instance, Brutus's consent to 
join the conspiracy against Csesar's life, after 
receiving so many marks of Caesar's affection 
and favor, should be laid, in part at least, to 
the door of Porcia. Servilia can have had no 
hand in it, and probably knew nothing of his 
participation in the enterprise. 

It is strange that no writer of fiction has ever 
thought of making Fulvia his heroine. Am- 
bitious, jealous, cruel, avaricious, and venge- 
ful, she made herself mistress of Rome, and 
ruled Italy with a capricious tyranny, which 
surpassed even that of the triumvirs. She 
married in succession Clodius, Curio, and 
Antony. To recount their careers is to recite 
the wildest political excesses of the period of 
revolution. It was Clodius who for nearly two 
yeais held Rome firmly in the grip of his 
armed bands of desperadoes, overawing the 
Courtis and the assemblies and at times even 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 73 

scoffing at the triumvirs and their legions. 
His career came to an end in a manner befit- 
ting such a man. He was killed in a street 
brawl in 52 B. C. by the faction of Milo, a rival 
leader. Fulvia married her second husband, 
Curio, therefore, just before the outbreak of 
the war between Caesar and Pompey, when 
his wild career was at its height. This "most 
accomplished rake," as Velleius Paterculus 
styles him, transferred his political allegiance 
so many times that it is a bewildering task to 
follow him. His sympathies were first with 
the bourgeoisie, later he was a conservative, 
finally a democrat, and in each of his affilia- 
tions joined the extreme faction of his party. 
Shortly after he married Fulvia, Caesar pur- 
chased his services for 100,000 sesterces, as 
current gossip reported. It was money well 
spent. For six months during the critical 
year 50 B. C, Curio single-handed held the 
senate at bay, and by his clever parliamentary 
tactics and his appeals to the populace pre- 
vented Pompey and the conservatives from 
carrying through any one of their measures 
against Csesar. It was Curio who, according 
to the current opinion of the times, finally 
"lighted the torch of war," as Velleius puts it. 



74 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

by inducing Caesar to cross the Rubicon and 
advance upon Rome. He was one of the first 
victims of the war, but Fulvia found a worthy 
successor to him in Mark Antony. What part 
she had in spurring Clodius and Curio on to 
their audacious acts we cannot say, but her 
course of action after her marriage to her third 
husband is a matter of history. When Caesar 
was struck down, no party and no leader 
seemed capable of action. The conspirators 
had looked no further than Caesar's death, 
and were without plans. Octavianus, Caesar's 
heir, was in Epirus, and Antony, the consul, 
suspecting further designs on the part of the 
conspirators, and not knowing their strength, 
made no move. But this situation of turmoil 
and confusion was the breath of life to Fulvia. 
At her instance, Antony took possession of 
Caesar's papers, forged documents to suit his 
own purpose, reorganized the Jacobin clubs, 
which had served Clodius so well, stirred the 
populace to indignation at Caesar's murder, 
and began the hasty recruiting of troops. It 
was these measures which forced Brutus, Cas- 
sius, and their fellow-conspirators to leave 
Rome and to abandon Italy to Antony and 
Fulvia. Her political career reaches its most 



UNDER THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 75 

dramatic point during the months of proscrip- 
tion after the formation of the Second Trium- 
virate, and after the battle of Phihppi in 42 
B. C. She rioted in the carnage and confisca- 
tion which followed the return of the trium- 
virs to Rome in 43 B. C, and when the head of 
Cicero was placed in her hands she pierced 
with a golden needle the tongue which had 
scored her first husband Clodius and branded 
Antony in the Philippics. After 42 B. C. she 
was practically in control of Italy. She had 
elevated her brother-in-law Lucius to the con- 
sulship, and with his help cowed Octavi- 
anus, sowed dissension throughout Italy, and 
brought the country to the verge of an armed 
conflict. Only the prompt action of Octavi- 
anus's general, Agrippa, in shutting up her 
adherents in Perusia and reducing that city 
by a siege, saved Italy from the horrors of an- 
other civil war. Thwarted by this reverse in 
her efforts to precipitate war in Italy, she 
crossed to Greece with three thousand troops, 
and, although Antony refused to see her, the 
bitter feeling which she had stirred up induced 
him to embark for Italy and lay siege to Brun- 
disium. The war was on in earnest, but at 
this critical moment Fulvia died, and with her 



76 WOMEN AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

disturbing influence at an end, Antony and 
Octavianus quickly came to an agreement. 

Fulvia typifies the spirit of unrest, disorder, 
and passion which characterizes the closing 
years of the Republic as perfectly as Li via, 
the proud, self-contained, far-seeing, tactful 
woman whom Octavianus married two years 
after Fulvia's death, personifies the ideal of 
the new regime. But Livia belongs to the 
Empire, not to the Republic, and is outside 
the limits set for this paper. 



ROMAN WOMEN IN THE TRADES 
AND PROFESSIONS 

IN the last paper we attempted to describe 
the part which Roman women took in 
poHtics under the Republic. It was only 
natural that the tendency which made toward 
social equality between the sexes, and which 
had given women a share in the management 
of public affairs, should in course of time 
carry them into some of the other vocations 
which had been reserved for men in the 
earlier period. Their activity in these mas- 
culine fields undoubtedly began under the 
Republic, but we have scanty means of estab- 
lishing the fact. Our information on this 
point comes almost entirely from epitaphs, 
and the great majority of these are subse- 
quent to republican times. 

Let us take up first the three learned pro- 
fessions, medicine, law, and theology. For 
admission to all of these pursuits modern civ- 
ilized peoples by law or custom require a pre- 
liminar^'^ training and apply some specified 

17 



78 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

test to ascertain the fitness of a candidate. It 
was not so at Rome. No preliminary train- 
ing was demanded of those who wished to 
practise medicine or appear at the bar. So 
far as theology was concerned, however, the 
Roman religion was a state religion, and, as 
among modern peoples where an established 
church exists, certain conditions of eligibility 
to the priesthoods were prescribed by eccle- 
siastical law or immemorial tradition which 
shut out women from these positions, if priestly 
offices, like that of Vesta, be excepted, which 
were open to women only. But new cults 
were constantly being brought into Italy 
through the cosmopolitan port of Ostia for 
which no such traditional prohibition existed, 
and to priesthoods in many of them women 
were freely admitted. 

Hyginus in his Fabulse tells us a rather 
pretty story, which may or may not be true, 
of the way in which women in the ancient 
world came to take up the profession of medi- 
cine. It seems that in Athens they were for- 
bidden by law to practise medicine, and that 
in consequence many women died for lack of 
professional assistance because they were un- 
willing to consult a male practitioner. De- 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 79 

ploring this unfortunate state of aflFairs a cer- 
tain Athenian woman, Agnodice by name, cut 
her hair short, put on the dress of a man, 
and studied medicine under the distinguished 
physician, Hierophilus. When she had re- 
ceived the necessary training she offered her 
services to other women who were in need of 
them, but her popularity excited the jealousy 
of other physicians, and on some charge they 
cited her before the Areopagus. To her 
judges in the Areopagus she made known her 
sex; whereupon her medical accusers charged 
her with violating the law which forbade 
women to practise medicine. It might have 
gone hard with her had not the women of 
Athens hurried to the court, and prevailed 
upon it to set her free in return for the service 
which she had rendered them. The law was 
repealed, and Agnodice, with others who were 
like-minded, was allowed to pursue the prac- 
tice of medicine. Agnodice's experience sug- 
gests one difficulty which women in ancient 
times had to encounter, as they do to-day in 
a measure — the difficulty of securing the requi- 
site training. Upon this point, however, it may 
be said, that medicine was not so highly de- 
veloped an art in Athens or in Rome as it is 



80 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

with us; and although there were some very 
skilful physicians, the standard set for the 
average practitioner was not a high one. 
Then, too, as soon as the social prejudice 
which prevented women from entering the 
professions had broken down, distinguished 
physicians in Rome do not seem to have been 
unwilling to take women as their pupils. At 
all events, a certain Restituta expresses her 
gratitude in an honorary inscription to the 
emperor's physician who had instructed her 
in medicine. Women physicians were freely 
recognized in the law even, for the Code of 
Justinian refers to "physicians of either sex." 
That the practice of medicine by women in 
the second century of our era was fairly com- 
mon seems to be clear from the fact that So- 
ranus, a writer of that century, in treating of 
the maladies of women, discusses the qualifi- 
cations which women who take up this 
branch of medicine must have. Among other 
things, he says they must know how to write; 
they must have a good memory, robust health, 
and an even temperament. They must be 
familiar with dietetics, pharmacy, and ordi- 
nary surgery. In particular he urges discre- 
tion, "for the affairs of the household and the 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 81 

life secrets of every one will be intrusted to 
you." Still, if we may judge from sepulchral 
inscriptions, the number of women who prac- 
tised medicine in the Empire was compara- 
tively small. Probably not more than one in 
ten of the physicians whose names appear in 
the Latin epitaphs were women. Some of 
them, however, won distinction in their pro- 
fession. Theodorus Priscianus, a court phy- 
sician of the fifth century, A. D., dedicated the 
third book of his medical treatise to a woman 
physician, and a certain Scantia Redempta is 
celebrated in her epitaph as "a leader in the 
science of medicine." 

The story of Agnodice, given above, may 
be simply an setiological myth invented to 
explain how women came to practise medi- 
cine, and to account for the fact that they con- 
fined their practice to patients of their own sex. 
No women are described on gravestones as 
surgeons or aurists, and among many extant 
stamps of oculists no one bears the name of a 
woman. Some women have a title which might 
indicate that they were general practitioners, 
but probably even they devoted themselves 
to obstetrics, massage, and the preparation 
of cosmetics, the art of the "beauty-doc- 



82 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

tor," and nervous ailments, specialties which 
are frequently mentioned in literature and the 
inscriptions. In taking up the last-mentioned 
specialty they must have found plenty of pa- 
tients. The luxurious tastes of the late Re- 
public and the early Empire, constant trav- 
elling to and fro, the exactions of fashionable 
life in the capital and at villas on the sea-shore 
and in the mountains, and the many public 
performances which great crowds attended at 
the theatre and the arena furnished the best 
possible conditions for the development of 
nervous diseases, among women especially. 
The lack of balance and self-restraint on the 
part of the Roman women of this period, 
which the poets satirize unsparingly, would 
indicate the prevalence of these disorders, 
even if Martial did not now and then refer to 
the hystericw and their treatment by women 
physicians. That in treating such cases 
women physicians sometimes employed other 
remedies than those included in the pharma- 
copoeia is suggested by the advice which So- 
ranus gives them, speaking as the conventional 
practitioner, not to resort to superstitious 
methods. We are not surprised to find that 
the sick often turned to religion for help in 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 83 

their physical ailments. Several cures by 
faith are recorded in the monuments. In one 
case a story is told in the inscriptions which 
furnishes a curious parallel to experiences re- 
ported from time to time by converts to our 
present-day methods of religious healing. 
A certain Felix records the fact on a dedica- 
tory stone in very ungrammatical, but vigor- 
ous Latin that "after having been given up 
by his physicians his sight had been restored 
through the kindness of the goddess Bona 
Dea and the medical treatment of her priest- 
ess Caunia Fortunata." Felix's experience 
with physicians reminds one of the remarks 
of the freedman Seleucus at the famous din- 
ner of Trimalchio, that "a doctor is noth- 
ing else than a sort of consolation to the 
mind." 

The medical profession was not one into 
which women of the better class entered. 
The art was introduced into Italy from 
Greece and almost all the men who followed 
it were Greek freedmen. An examination of 
the names on tombstones shows us that the 
women also who practised medicine were of 
the same nationality and of the same low 
social standing. 



84 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

So far as the legal profession is concerned, 
no technical training was required of those 
who wished to enter it, but the law did not 
recognize the right of women to appear as 
advocates. It is a little surprising, after hav- 
ing secured the recognition of their indepen- 
dence before the law, and after having gained 
admission to almost all the vocations previ- 
ously monopolized by men, that they failed to 
carry this masculine stronghold. Apparently 
they made some progress toward winning the 
privilege, since we find a provision in the 
Praetorian Edict of Ulpian forbidding them to 
appear as advocates. Such a prohibition 
would scarcely have been made if women had 
not attempted to practise law. However, in 
certain circumstances, women might appear in 
court in their own defence. That gossipy 
writer Valerius Maximus mentions two such 
instances of women who argued their own 
cases. His opinion of the propriety of their 
action may be easily inferred from his re- 
mark in introducing the cases: "One must 
mention even those women upon whom nature 
and the modesty which befits the stola was not 
strong enough to impose silence in the forum 
and in the courts." One of the two, he tells 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 85 

us, because she pleaded her own cause as a 
man would have done, was dubbed **the 
Man- woman," Androgyne. Of the other, who 
argued her case before the praetor, ''not be- 
cause there was a lack of advocates, but be- 
cause she was filled with presumption," he 
says, **she lived to the second consulship of 
Gains Caesar, and the first of Publius Servil- 
ius, for one ought to record the time when 
such an abnormal being died rather than 
when she was born." 

The anthropomorphic element entered in 
large measure into the religion of the Romans, 
and it was only natural that the family rela- 
tions should be reflected in their religious 
conceptions. Thus, corresponding to the hus- 
band and wife in this world, were Jupiter and 
Juno in the celestial world, Janus and Vesta, 
Sol and Luna, Minerva and Mars, Pluto and 
Proserpina, and the temples of the two mem- 
bers of each sacred pair were often in close 
proximity to each other; and as men had 
charge of the rites of Jupiter, for instance, so 
women took a leading part in the cult of Juno. 
In fact, the differentiation of the conception 
of Juno from that of Jupiter, and the devel- 
opment of her cult, would almost seem to have 



86 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

run parallel to the acquisition of individuality 
by woman and to her escape from the control 
of her husband. 

Perhaps women have always taken a more 
intense interest in religious matters than men. 
It seems to have been so in Rome. It is in- 
teresting, for instance, to note that the earliest 
Latin document of any length which we have 
is a decree of the senate from 186 B. C. directed 
particularly against the excesses into which 
women had run in carrying on the rites of 
Bacchus. Even the severe repressive measures 
which this statute provided do not seem to 
have been effectual, for very recently utensils 
connected with the cult of Bacchus have been 
found in a Roman house which is as late as 
the first century B. C. Many of the priest- 
hoods were held by them from the earliest 
times. The cult of Vesta was, of course, en- 
tirely in their hands, to say nothing of the pre- 
dominant part which they had in conducting 
the rites of Ceres and other female deities. 
The wives of many priests, too, held an official 
position recognized by the state, and a great 
many tombstones are to be found throughout 
the Empire in honor of the flaminica who 
participated with the flamen in directing the 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 87 

combined cults of the Goddess Rome and of 
Augustus. 

From discussing the three learned profes- 
sions one naturally passes to the pursuit of 
literature. The indirect influence of women 
upon Latin literature under the Empire must 
have been very great. Even if there were no 
specific proofs of this fact, we could draw the 
inference from the literary conditions of to-day. 
It is freely stated in some quarters, for in- 
stance, that the character of the present-day 
drama is determined by women. It seems to 
be true, at all events, that the playwright and 
the theatrical manager must make sure of 
pleasing them, if the theatres are to be filled. 
The novel was invented to please women, 
and, since they make up the majority of the 
novel-readers, the novelist must be guided by 
their taste in the matter of fiction. At Rome, 
even as early as the time of Horace, we hear of 
the drawing-room critic surrounded by his 
"lady pupils," and Juvenal's famous diatribe 
against the literary woman a century later will 
be recalled. "Yet she is more offensive," he 
says, "who, as soon as she has taken her place 
at the table, praises Virgil, excuses the doomed 
Dido, matches and pairs off the poets, then 



88 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

weighs in the balance Virgil on the one side, 
Homer on the other. Grammarians yield; 
teachers of rhetoric are vanquished ; the entire 
company is silent; not even a lawyer, a public 
crier, nor any other woman even may speak. 
. . . Let not the matron who is joined to you 
in marriage be the mistress of a style, or evolve 
an argument with well-rounded speech, and 
let her not know all the histories, but some 
things there are in books which I would have 
her not understand. I hate the woman who 
is always turning back to the grammatical 
rules of Palsemon and consulting them, always 
following the law and the rationale of speech; 
the feminine antiquary who recalls verses un- 
known to me, and corrects the words of an 
unpolished friend which even a man would 
not observe. Let a husband be allowed to 
make a solecism. The wise person puts a limit 
even on things good in themselves." It was 
the drawing-room literature written to please 
women of this type upon which Persius pours 
his scorn in his first satire — literature cast 
in an archaistic, pedantic style, with well- 
rounded periods and sonorous words. If we 
should stop to ask ourselves what literary pro- 
ductions we owe to the inspiration which indi- 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 89 

vidual women gave the Roman poets we should 
recall such women as the Lesbia of Catullus, 
the Cynthia of Propertius, and the Delia of 
Tibullus ; but with the indirect influence which 
womankind exerted upon literature, or with 
the inspiration which the Latin poets found 
in the beauty or the accomplishments of indi- 
vidual women, we are not concerned here. 
Our purpose is a much more modest one, to 
get some idea of the extent to which women 
entered the literary field. 

It was only natural that among the many 
women interested in literature some should 
try their hand at composition. Fate has not 
been kind to those of their number who 
courted the Muses. In most cases they are 
names only to us. Few of their productions 
have come down to modern times, and we 
must judge of their quality mainly from the 
passing comments made upon them by con- 
temporary writers of the masculine sex. We 
have said that fate was unkind to them. Per- 
haps she was kinder to them than we think. 
The bits which are extant and what we are 
told by the ancients of the literary work of 
women do not fill us with regret at our loss. 
Very few, if any of them, made literature their 



90 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

profession, as Horace did, for instance. Al- 
most all of them were dilettanti, or else the 
pursuit of literature was quite incidental to 
other interests. So far as form was con- 
cerned, they showed a marked preference for 
verse, although, as we shall see, at least three 
of the most noteworthy pieces of literary work 
done by women were in prose. It would be 
interesting to speculate upon the schools to 
which these literary women belonged, and 
upon the literary movements which they fol- 
lowed, but it would be largely speculation, 
not based on full and trustworthy information. 
The most noteworthy literary women among 
the Romans were Cornelia, Sulpicia, Agrip- 
pina the Younger, and the author of a Pil- 
grimage to the Holy Land. Cornelia is the first 
woman of whose literary activity we have any 
record. She was the first woman, too, it will 
be remembered, to make her influence felt on 
Roman public life. All that we have left from 
her pen are extracts from two letters (or two 
extracts from the same letter) addressed to 
her son Gains. They were written after the 
death of Tiberius and deal with a subject near 
to her heart, the punishment of his enemies, 
and the execution of his political plans. Some 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 91 

fifty years ago their authenticity was called in 
question. But no one doubts it to-day. The 
sternness of their tone, and the quaintness of 
their diction, and their manner, which is rather 
spirited than logical in the masculine way, 
bespeak the daughter of Scipio and the mother 
of the Gracchi. The opinion was hazarded in 
the last paper that Gains was led by his 
mother's teachings to take up the work of 
Tiberius where his brother dropped it at his 
death. These letters to Gains furnish strong 
confirmation of that view. 

Sulpicia belonged to the literary circle of 
Messalla, of which Tibullus was the most dis- 
tinguished member. She has left us a half- 
dozen elegies celebrating her love for a young 
Greek named Cerinthus. They are all short 
poems of eight lines or less, graceful in form 
and sincere in tone. Their authenticity has 
been questioned, but apparently without good 
reason. 

In the fourth book of his Annals Tacitus 
gives us an account of an interview between 
the Emperor Tiberius and Agrippina the 
Elder, the wife of Germanicus, the emperor's 
hated rival. The story of this meeting Tacitus 
says he has taken from the Memoirs of the 



92 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

younger Agrippina. Unfortunately Agrip- 
pina's work has not come down to us. It 
would be hard to think of a document of 
livelier interest for the reigns of Tiberius, 
Claudius, and perhaps Nero, than the remi- 
niscences of the woman whose mother knew 
the ins and outs of politics under Tiberius, 
and who was herself the wife of Claudius and 
the mother of Nero. We might hear something 
of the wiles by which she led Claudius to 
marry her, and to pass over his own son and 
make her son by a former marriage heir to the 
throne. Agrippina might throw some light 
upon her offensive and defensive alliance 
with Pallas, and her political duel with the 
clever freedman Narcissus, upon her regency 
during the early part of Nero's reign, and her 
gradual loss of influence over him. Could we 
make a guess from reading her book whether 
she really poisoned her husband Claudius or 
not ? Even if she did not let us into the secrets 
of these political intrigues, in an age like this 
of ours, when autobiography is the popular 
form of literature, when curiosity concerning 
the private life of distinguished people knows 
no bounds, any sketches of court scenes in her 
day or any stories of the intimate life of Ti- 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 93 

berius, Claudius, or Nero would be read with 
avidity. Is it possible that Tacitus drew from 
these Memoirs part of the material upon which 
he bases his estimate of Tiberius, and that we 
owe to Agrippina the repellent picture which 
he has painted of that emperor ? 

The most noteworthy find in the field of 
Latin literature during the last twenty years 
was the discovery in a library at Arezzo, Italy, 
of a manuscript containing an account of the 
pilgrimage of a certain woman to the Holy 
Land. This holy lady made a journey to 
Palestine in the fourth century of our era 
from her home, somewhere in western Eu- 
rope, and she has left us a record of her im- 
pressions and adventures. It is the longest 
extant piece of Latin literature from a feminine 
hand. The document has not come down to 
us in a complete form, so that we cannot 
learn from it the name of the author. Many 
scholars have held the opinion, however, that it 
is the work of a certain Silvia, the sister of Ru- 
finus, a Roman prefect of the fourth century. 
This identification depends in part on the 
extraordinary powers of endurance which the 
writer had in climbing mountains, in making 
long journeys on foot, in putting up with heat 



94 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

and cold, and in the contempt which she 
showed for the comforts and conveniences of 
life. These characteristics harmonize per- 
fectly with the austere vigor of the holy pil- 
grim Silvia, to whom other qualities of the 
book point, and of whom Bishop Palladius 
relates this incident: On coming in her trav- 
els to Pelusium in Egypt, she found that the 
deacon Jubinus, who had been stricken with 
fever, had bathed in cold water and then laid 
down to rest. When Silvia saw him, she re- 
proved him for his weakness, saying to him: 
'* Yield not, yield not; look at me; I am in 
my sixtieth year, and water has touched no 
part of my body even when divers maladies 
have come upon me, except the tips of my fin- 
gers before communion, . . . and when sick 
I have not reclined upon a couch nor been 
carried in a lectica." Very lately it has been 
urged with considerable probability that the 
Pilgrimage was really written by Aetheria, a 
Spanish abbess. Whether she or Silvia was the 
author matters little to us. At all events the 
book was the work of a woman. The writer 
had evidently had no previous experience in 
literary composition; her vocabulary is very 
limited, and her style monotonous and repeti- 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 95 

tious. But as a woman's straightforward 
record of her experiences while making a long 
and dijBBcult journey through Egypt, Pales- 
tine, and Mesopotamia, and of the impres- 
sions which the sacred places in the Holy 
Land made upon her, the book has a lively 
interest for us. To one who is interested in 
church ceremonial and Palestinian topog- 
raphy it is of course of peculiar value, while 
to the student of language it is a mine of in- 
formation, because the author had no training 
in formal literary Latin, but wrote in the popu- 
lar Latin which she used in conversation. 
The brief sketches which have been given of the 
writings of Cornelia, Sulpicia, Agrippina, and 
Sancta Silvia, or Aetheria, show pretty clearly 
that women made no important contributions 
to Latin literature. 

In the good old days of the legitimate 
drama under Plautus, Terence, Accius, and 
Pacuvius women never appeared upon the 
stage. Feminine roles were taken by men in 
female dress. But with the appearance of 
the mime and the farce in the first century 
before our era, women began to take part in 
theatrical and musical performances. Their 
larger participation in such matters under the 



96 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

Empire is proved by the discovery of the bury- 
ing place of a guild of women mimes, just 
outside Rome, along one of the highways 
leading from the city. Women took a very 
active part in public musical performances, if 
we may draw an inference from the number 
of epitaphs which we find in honor of women 
who had been solo singers and flute players. 
One young woman named Eucharis, in a very 
pretty metrical epitaph of twenty-two lines, 
which probably dates from the first century 
before our era, claims the credit of having in- 
troduced the musical monologue on the Roman 
stage. Yet no women performers ever attained 
the high degree of popular favor which was 
reached by Apelles the musical virtuoso under 
Caligula, Menecrates the composer under 
Nero, or Paris the mime whom Martial has 
immortalized in one of his epigrams : 

Thou that beatest the Flaminian Way, 

Pass not this noble tomb, but stay; 

Here Rome's delight, and Nile's salt treasure, 

Art, graces, sport, and sweetest pleasure^ 

The grief and glory of the stage. 

And all the Cupids of the age. 

And all the Venuses, lie here. 

Interred in Paris' sepulchre. 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 97 

Most of the women who went on the stage 
were of Greek extraction, as their names indi- 
cate, and belonged to the lower classes. 

The same thing is true of the women who 
engaged in trade or handiwork. Passing over 
those, like nurses and maids, who were em- 
ployed in household service, and noticing 
only the women who took up occupations 
which brought them into contact with the 
public, we find mentioned in the inscriptions 
costumers, seamstresses, washerwomen, weav- 
ers, women in charge of estates, fish-mongers, 
and barmaids. Their commonest occupations 
were the various trades connected with the 
making and repairing of clothing. Very likely 
the epitaphs do not give us a correct idea of 
the number of Roman women engaged in 
business. Probably in ancient Rome, as in 
modern Rome or in Paris, the tradesman's or 
artisan's wife helped him to keep his shop, 
but that fact naturally finds no place on a 
tombstone. Most of the women in this cate- 
gory, as we have noticed above, were freed- 
women, but the women who were engaged in 
one branch of business at Rome belonged to 
the most exclusive circles of Roman society. 
The trade in question was the brick business. 



98 ROMAN WOMEN IN THE 

an industry which was largely controlled by 
women, and by women of the leading fam- 
ilies. This fact is evident from the stamp, 
found on almost every Roman brick, indicat- 
ing the brickkiln or the estate from which 
the brick comes. Some of the stamps bear 
the names of such distinguished women as the 
Empress Plotina, Arria Fadilla, mother of 
Antoninus Pius, and Faustina, the consort of 
Marcus Aurelius ; but the names which occur 
most frequently are those of Domitia Lucilla 
the Elder and her daughter, who apparently 
had the leading brick business in Rome for 
half a century. 

If we make a general survey of the facts 
which have been noted above, it is clear that 
Roman women took an active part in the lit- 
erary and religious life of the time, and in 
many of the cults held priesthoods or oflBcially 
recognized positions from very early times. 
Their interest in literature, however, was not 
serious, and they have produced very little of 
permanent value. In the practice of law they 
never succeeded in getting a sure foothold. 
Women of the lower classes entered freely 
into the medical profession and the trades, 
but so far as medicine is concerned women 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 99 

confined their practice to members of their 
own sex. The principal branches of business 
which they took up were those connected with 
the manufacture of wearing apparel. The 
pursuits of the shopkeeper and the artisan 
were naturally left to the lower classes, but 
women of standing in society engaged in in- 
dustries organized on a large scale, as we can 
see clearly enough in the case of the brick 
business. 



THE THEATRE AS A FACTOR IN 

ROMAN POLITICS UNDER THE 

REPUBLIC 

IN our day political opinion finds expression 
or enthusiasm for a cause, or a candidate 
is stimulated, through the public press, on 
the platform with its accessories in the way of 
processions and receptions, and at the elec- 
tions. In Rome under the Republic the two 
last-mentioned methods of testing popular 
sentiment are to be found, but the place which 
the press holds with us as an organ for the 
expression of public opinion on political mat- 
ters seems to have been taken by the theatre, 
for, as Cicero says in his oration for Sestiua, 
*'in three places especially the judgment and 
desire of the Roman people can be made 
known, viz., at the contio [or gatherings for 
public discussion], at the comitia [or meetings 
of the popular assemblies], and when the peo- 
ple come together at the games and the gladia- 

100 



THE THEATRE 101 

torial contests." * He then proceeds to discuss 
at some length,^ in the subsequent chapters of 
his oration, the attitude of the people in their 
pubUc meetings, at the ballot-box, and at the 
plays and games, and comes to the conclusion ' 
that public opinion found true expression only 
at the theatrical performances and the gladia- 
torial contests. Was this true ? Was the thea- 
tre such an important political factor and the 
only correct index of public feeling in Cicero's 
day ? His conclusion cannot be accepted 
without question, because he is not an unprej- 
udiced judge of the matter. The demonstra- 
tions in the theatre and at the games during 
the period of his exile, of which he is speaking 
here, had favored him, but the contiones and 
the comitia of that year had been hostile to 
him. This situation might account for his 
view that the real sentiments of the people 
were best indicated in the theatre. It is worth 
while considering the correctness of his state- 
ment by examining very briefly the condition 
of the contiones and comitia under the late Re- 



» Cicero, pro Sestio, 106. Some of the passages cited in this 
paper might not be entirely clear apart from the context in which 
they stand, so that I have thought it wise to give them in trans- 
lation and in such an English form as will bring out the points of 
interest to us. « Ibid., 106-127. » Ibid., 127. 



102 THE THEATRE 

public, and by glancing at the part which the 
theatre played in political life. A complete 
presentation of all the evidence would be out 
of place here, nor is it necessary for our pur- 
pose. 

It is convenient to approach the subject 
from the negative side and to ask, first, if Cic- 
ero's low estimate of the political organiza- 
tions of his day is correct. On this point there 
can be little doubt. The city of Rome grew at 
a tremendous rate during the first century 
B. C, and most of the new-comers were men 
of little worth. They were discouraged and 
bankrupt farmers; free laborers, who were 
driven out of the country districts by slavery; 
ne'er-do-weels, who wished to live upon the 
largess of the state; men attracted to Rome 
by the theatre, the games, and the other 
amusements and excitements which the city 
had to offer; people who preferred to live by 
their wits rather than by the labor of their 
hands, and found a more promising field in 
Rome for the exercise of their talents than 
the small towns and the country offered; the 
veterans, whose long terms of service in the 
field had made it well-nigh impossible for them 
to take up contentedly or successfully the hum- 



IN ROMAN POLITICS 103 

drum life of a farmer or artisan; and, finally, 
the hordes of freedmen who had low standards 
of political honor and little sympathy with 
Roman political traditions. All these people 
had the right to the suffrage, and their vote 
was a salable article of considerable value. 
They naturally attached themselves to some 
political leader; they were organized into 
companies, and cast their votes as they were 
instructed. From meetings of the popular 
assemblies made up largely of such elements 
one could hardly expect an honest expression 
of opinion. The low moral character of the 
electoral and legislative bodies was not the 
only charge to be made against them. They 
were centres of chicanery and turbulence. 
One sees the consul Metellus slipping into the 
Campus by a roundabout route to prevent a 
political opponent from postponing a meeting 
of the assembly by announcing that the aus- 
pices were unfavorable,* or Milo anticipating 
the other party by occupying the Campus with 
an armed force at midnight on the day before 
the election, and holding it until noon against 
the opposite side, **to the unbounded delight 
of eveiybody and to his own great credit," 

> Cic. eui Att. iv, 3, 4. 



104 THE THEATRE 

as Cicero, whose political sympathies favored 
Milo, regards the manoeuvre. Or sometimes 
political workers block up the approaches to 
the ballot-boxes or see to it that ballots of one 
kind only are supplied to the voters.^ The 
honesty of elections was vitiated still more 
flagrantly by the use of force. For this pur- 
pose bands of retainers were organized and 
drilled,^ and by their use the comitia were 
overawed and peaceable citizens were kept 
away from the meetings. The illegal em- 
ployment of money was even more fatal to 
honest elections than the use of force. Prob- 
ably bribery has never been so prevalent as it 
was during the last century of the Republic. 
To this fact the bribery laws of 67, 63, 55, and 
52 B. C, with their increasing penalties and 
ingenious devices for securing evidence, abun- 
dantly testify.^ The buying of votes was re- 
duced to a system. The baser citizens were 
formed into political clubs, and professional 
agents were employed in organizing and pay- 
ing venal voters. The use of money was car- 
ried to such an extent in 54 B. C, for instance, 
that every one of the candidates for the con- 

» Ibid., i, 14, 5. « Cic. pro Seat. 34; ad Att. i, 13, 3. 

» Cic. ad Att. i, 16, 13. 



IN ROMAN POLITICS 105 

sulship in that year was indicted for bri- 
bery.' 

The state of the contiones for the discussion 
of public questions was still worse. Here the 
test of citizenship was not applied, and the 
meetings were packed with freedmen and 
slaves ^ whose clamor contionalis became a 
byword. Companies of bravoes were organ- 
ized,^ who drowned the voice of a hostile 
speaker, drove him from the rostra, or con- 
verted the place of meeting into a veritable 
shambles.* A frequent concomitant of these 
public meetings was a demonstration in the 
streets. Thus, Cicero tells us^ that Caesar 
tried to lead the mob from the contio to sur- 
round the house of Bibulus, and during the 
scarcity of grain Clodius induced his audi- 
ence to march through the streets and threaten 
the senate.® The counterpart to these out- 
bursts of popular passion was furnished by the 
street demonstrations in honor of a political 
leader. Sometimes they were of an impromptu 
character, like the gathering of the great com- 
pany which escorted Cicero home when he 

» Cic. ad Q. fr. iii, 2, 3; ad Att. iv, 17, 2. 

» Cic. ad Att. ii, 1, 8; ii, 16, 1. ' Cic. pro Seat. 34. 

* Cic. ad Q. fr. ii, 3, 2-4; Ibid., i, 2, 15; pro Sest. 77. 

' Cic. ad Att. ii, 21, 5. « Ibid., iv, 1, 6. 



106 THE THEATRE 

laid down the oflSce of consul, or like the ova- 
tion which he received on returning from 
exile;* or they were carefully prepared, like 
the organized escorts of honor upon which so 
much stress is laid in the little pamphlet on 
Candidacy for the Consulship. All these facts 
fully substantiate Cicero's statement that the 
opinion of the Roman people on political 
matters did not find free and honest expression 
in an ordinary meeting of the contio or comitia. 
Is the rest of his assertion equally trust- 
worthy ? Was the theatre a political factor to 
be reckoned with, and did it indicate the real 
course of the political current? In the thea- 
tre the sentiment of the people was indicated 
on occasions of two sorts, either when a politi- 
cal leader entered, or when a passage in a play 
applied, or was thought to apply, to a local 
situation. We have several interesting re- 
ports of cases where demonstrations of the 
first kind occurred. For instance, the popu- 
larity of Curio's course in 59 B. C. was clearly 
shown by the enthusiasm which his coming 
into the theatre aroused,^ whereas the faint 
applause with which Caesar was received ' 
when he entered was so significant of the 

» im., 4, 1. « Ibid, ii, 18, 1. « Ibid., 19, 3. 



IN ROMAN POLITICS 107 

attitude of the people that it created great 
anxiety in the democratic party, of which he 
was a leader, and in the opinion of the con- 
servative Cicero was likely to bring about 
a political reaction, and this in spite of the 
fact that Csesar controlled the contiones and 
comitia. How Hortensius was received after 
having taken an unpopular course in a noto- 
rious political trial Cselius cleverly describes, 
by applying to the roar of disapproval of the 
great throng in the theatre when Hortensius 
entered, and their derisive whistling, an onom- 
atopoetic line from the famous storm passage 
in Pacuvius, 

" The rumbling, roaring, rolling thunder, and the whis- 
tling of the cordage," 

and he adds this comment: *'This was the 
more noticed, because Hortensius had reached 
old age unassailed by hisses; but on that 
occasion he was roundly enough hissed to 
satisfy any man his life long, and to make 
Hortensius regret at last his victory at the 
trial." ^ Bribery and the use of force, which 
made political meetings and elections an un- 
trustworthy indication of the sentiment of the 

* Cic. ad. jam. viii, 2, 1. 



108 THE THEATRE 

people, could not be used with equal success 
in the theatre. Honest and peaceable citizens 
could be kept away from the contiones and 
comitia, but no Roman would give up the 
high privilege of seeing the play. Bands of 
hired political supporters might try to give 
their employer an enthusiastic welcome and 
to convey the impression that an unpopular 
leader had the support of the citizens, but their 
applause would be drowned by the hisses of 
the great mass of the people, or would pale 
into insignificance before the enthusiasm 
aroused by the entrance of the leader of the 
opposite party. Under the Empire, even after 
public meetings had been given up and the 
comitia had disappeared, the public clung to 
their right of expressing in the theatre or at 
the games their approval or disapproval of 
the conduct of the emperor. 

More interesting still were references from 
the stage to contemporary persons or events. 
Sometimes the playwright himself introduced 
the reference, sometimes the actor applied to 
the local situation a passage which in the play 
as it came from the pen of the playwright had 
no such significance. In proportion as it kept 
itself free from Hellenizing influences, the 



IN ROMAN POLITICS 109 

lighter forms of the national drama would seem 
always to have referred to contemporary affairs 
with considerable freedom. The attitude of 
Nsevius, the first great writer of comedy, is 
clearly indicated in a passage in the Agitatoria, 
*' Freedom (of speech) I have always esteemed 
more highly than money and held as much to 
be preferred to it" ; ^ and the following defiant 
sentiment he puts into the mouth of the peo- 
ple, "Against that of which I have approved 
in the theatre no tyrant dare transgress." ^ 
These statements and other bold ones to be 
found elsewhere in the extant fragments of 
his comedies,' the story of his imprisonment 
for his freedom in criticising men and things,* 
as given by Gellius, and the epigram upon him 
which emphasizes his '' Campanian ^ bold- 
ness," show clearly enough the freedom with 
which he spoke of prominent men and events 
of his own time, even if his daring fling at the 
scandal connected with Scipio's birth,® and 
his bold hint that the Metelli owed the consul- 
ship to good luck rather than to personal 
merit, ^ had not come down to us. Plautus 

» Ribbeck, Com. Rom. Fr., Naev. 9-10. 

2 Ibid., Naev. 72-73. » Ibid., Naev. 20, 111-112. 

* Gellius, iii, 3, 15. s ihid., i, 24, 1. 

«Ribbeck, Naev. 108-110. » Ps. Ascon. p. 140, ed. Or. 



110 THE THEATRE 

refers frequently to general conditions in his 
own time, but, either warned by the fate of 
Nsevius, or in obedience to the tendency which 
becomes more and more apparent in Csecilius 
and Terence, says little or nothing which 
could give offence to specific individuals. 
Whether references were made to political 
affairs in plays like the togatae, where the scene 
and the coloring were Roman rather than 
Greek, it is difficult to say, because of the 
scanty fragments which we have of this form 
of the drama; but that they were a character- 
istic feature of another form of dramatic enter- 
tainment, the mime, seems to be clear from 
the famous passage at arms between the actors 
and playwrights, Laberius and Syrus,^ and 
from Cicero's mock anxiety lest Laberius make 
his friend Trebatius, who was campaigning 
with Caesar in Gaul, the hero of one of his 
farces. An interesting passage in one of Cic- 
ero's letters from 44 B. C.^ shows what an im- 
portant political factor the mime was. Cicero 
remarks to Atticus: *'I received two letters 
from you yesterday. From the first one I 
learned about the theatre and Publilius [Syrus 

» Macrob. Sat ii, 7. 

» Cic. ad Att. xiv, 2, I; ad jam. xii, 2, 2. 



IN ROMAN POLITICS 111 

the playwright] — encouraging indications of 
a united populace. The applause, in fact, 
given to Lucius Cassius seemed to me at any 
rate a delicate compliment." That writers 
of mimes occupied themselves with political 
matters may be inferred also from other state- 
ments in the Letters of Cicero. In one of these 
he hints at passages descriptive of Caesar's ex- 
ploits in the plays which Laberius and Publilius 
Syrus brought out at the dramatic festival 
given by the dictator to celebrate his victory 
at Thapsus. Speaking of his own philo- 
sophical acceptance of the political situation, 
he says, *'In fact, I have already become so 
callous, that at the games given by our friend 
Caesar, with perfect equanimity I gazed upon 
Titus Plancus and listened to the productions 
of Laberius and Publilius." ^ In another 
letter he remarks to Atticus, "You will write 
to me if you have anything of practical im- 
portance; if not, describe to me fully the 
attitude of the people [in the theatre] and the 
local hits in the mimes." ^ 

We have noticed that all the extant passages 
in which playwrights refer to contemporary 
politics are to be found in the lighter forms 

» Cic. ad fam. xii, 18, 2. « Cic. ad AU. xiv, 3, 2. 



112 THE THEATRE 

of the drama. On the other hand, the verses 
which actors apply to politicians or public 
events of their own time occur mainly in 
tragedy. How frequently lines were applied 
in this way and how quick the audience was 
to see their application is clear from a passage 
in Cicero's oration in defence of Sestius, "Not 
to pass over even this point, among the many 
and varied utterances [on the stage] there has 
never been a passage in which some sentiment 
expressed by a poet seemed to apply to our 
own time, which either escaped the whole 
audience or which the actor himself did not 
bring out." * An illustration of the alertness 
of the people in this respect is furnished by an 
incident mentioned in the same connection.' 
The Andromacha Aechmalotis of Ennius was 
being given, and when the passage *'I have 
seen it all enveloped in flames," which de- 
scribes the burning of Priam's palace, was 
reached, the actor and the audience applied it 
to the destruction of Cicero's house by Clo- 
dius, and the people burst into tears at the 
thought of the wrong done their great leader. 
The passage from Accius,^ **You permit him 
to be an exile; you allow him to be driven out; 

> ac. pro Seat. 118. » Ibid., 121. » Ibid., 122. 



IN ROMAN POLITICS 113 

you put up with his banishment," brought to 
the dullest mind the picture of the exile in 
Thessalonica, while "Tullius, who had been 
the bulwark of the liberty of the citizens," 
was encored again and again; and when, in 
giving the Simulans of Afranius, the entire 
company of actors turned toward the place 
where Clodius sat and thundered at him the 
lines, "This, O foul, base man, is the outcome 
and conclusion of the life of a libertine," * 
even that stormy petrel of politics was aghast 
at the probable effect of the incident on pop- 
ular sentiment. Pompey felt the same anxiety 
at the Festival of Apollo in 59 B. C, when the 
tragedian Diphilus applied to him some lines 
from a play in which he was acting,^ and 
Pacuvius's line, "To think that I have saved 
them that they might destroy me," which 
Caesar's followers, after his death, put in the 
mouth of their leader, probably played no 
small role in arousing the wrath of the people 
against the conspirators.^ Now and then a 
player who found he had struck a popular 
chord followed up his success by improvising 
a line, as an actor in a play of Accius did on 
a certain occasion.* 

> Cic. pro Sest. 123. » Cic. ad Alt. ii, 19, 3. 

» Suet. lul 84. ! Cic. pro Sest. 121. 



114 THE THEATRE 

A study of the theatre as a political factor 
under the Empire lies outside the scope of 
this paper, but the theatre or circus continued 
to furnish almost the only means which the 
great mass of the people had for expressing 
their opinion on public men or public ques- 
tions.* 

» Suet, Aug, 53; Tib. 45; N&ro, 39; Odba, 13. 



PETRONIUS: A STUDY IN ANCIENT 

REALISM 

THE Latin novelist, Petronius, of the 
first century of our era, has been 
strangely neglected, as it seems to me. 
In our latest, and in other respects our best, 
history of the early novel even his name is not 
mentioned. It is a perilous thing to discuss 
the work of an author whose life and writings 
are so little known to the general public; and 
when even the professional student of literary 
history ignores his existence, it is like flying in 
the face of Providence. But the important 
position which Petronius holds as the creator 
of a new genre of literature may properly justify 
the imprudence. Furthermore the small circle 
of his admirers is likely to be enlarged in the 
near future, since two good translations into 
English of a portion of his work have lately 
appeared, and he may at last be rescued from 
the obscurity in which he languishes. 

Perhaps it is not quite correct to say that 
the facts in the life of Petronius are not widely 

115 



116 PETRONIUS 

known to-day. Whoever has read the "Quo 
Vadis," of Sienkiewicz, his great PoKsh fol- 
lower in the field of prose fiction, will know 
what manner of man Petronius was, and many 
of us who remember the incident where the 
hero of Quo Vadis purchases at the book shop 
of Avirnus a copy of his Satyricon for a friend, 
Vinicius, bidding him keep the author's name 
a secret, may wonder whether the book has 
survived the wreck of the Roman Empire, 
and, if it has, what its character and value 
are. A part of it has come down to us, per- 
haps a fourth or fifth of the entire work. In 
subject and in treatment it is exactly such 
a production as one would expect from the 
pen of a man like Petronius. The reader will 
remember in the novel of Sienkiewicz the 
closing hours of the life of Petronius. The 
description is founded upon fact, for it is based 
upon the pages of the historian Tacitus. 
After holding securely for a long time the 
unique position of director-in-chief of the im- 
perial pleasures under the capricious voluptu- 
ary, Nero, Petronius at last saw another sup- 
plant him in the emperor's favor. Knowing 
that his days were numbered, he decided not to 
wait for the inevitable sentence of death, but. 



PETRONIUS 117 

inviting his friends to dinner, he opened one or 
more of his veins and passed away in the en- 
joyment of those pleasures to which he had 
given so many years of his life; and it was 
characteristic of the man that he bound up 
the wounds when the conversation took a turn 
which interested him, and that, as Tacitus 
tells us, he did not pass these last hours in dis- 
coursing on the immortality of the soul and the 
teachings of the sages, but in listening to the 
recital of gay and trifling verses. This is 
the only information of present interest which 
the ancients have left us concerning the great 
Roman realist. Perhaps it would help us to 
a more intelligent understanding of his work, 
to sketch in somewhat fully, as a background 
to this impressionist view of Petronius, which 
Tacitus gives us, a picture of the times in 
which he lived; but a few words must suflGice 
upon this point. 

In the period of one hundred years which 
intervened between the middle of the first cen- 
tury B. C. and the middle of the first century 
A. D. Roman life and character had under- 
gone tremendous changes of a social, political, 
and religious nature. The beginning of this 
period is distinguished by the completion of 



118 PETRONIUS 

Pompey's conquests in the East, and the con- 
sequent influx into Italy of thousands of Greeks 
and Orientals, who brought with them, to 
undermine the comparatively simple life of 
the Roman, the standards of luxury of the 
ancient and effete civilizations. Many of the 
newcomers were slaves, and the cheapness of 
their labor soon drove the peasant proprietors 
from the country districts of Italy to Rome, 
to swell the number of idle men already in the 
metropolis. The Romans were quick also to 
appreciate the opportunities which the Orient 
offered them for making fortunes, and the 
Eastern provinces were soon filled with Roman 
tax-gatherers, traders, and bankers, who came 
back ultimately to spend their money in 
Italy with all the prodigality which the exag- 
gerated Oriental ideas of luxury could develop 
in parvenus. Political changes at home and 
abroad in this period were almost as marked 
as economic changes. The brain and brawn 
of every citizen had been needed in the early 
struggles of Rome for existence, and in her 
later contests for supremacy with rivals like 
Carthage. But at the beginning of our era 
Rome's enemies abroad were not to be feared, 
and the men who protected her far-away 



PETRONIUS 119 

frontiers were no longer the citizens who left 
the field and the bench, to return to them later 
with the addition of those forceful qualities 
which come from military discipline, but pro- 
fessional soldiers who passed their lives in the 
provinces. In civil life the emperor had 
gained so complete a mastery that there was 
no longer any outlet for the political ambition 
of the man of genius, nor any opportunity for 
the average citizen to gratify his natural desire 
for a part in the control of affairs. A religion 
with a strong spiritual or moral tendency like 
Judaism might have stemmed the tide setting 
toward selfishness and materialism, but, as a 
writer upon morals has remarked, '*the Ro- 
man religion, though in its best days an ad- 
mirable system of moral discipline, was never 
an independent source of moral enthusiasm." 
In the period which we are considering the 
Roman had outgrown his religion. 

The extension of his horizon, and an ac- 
quaintance with more highly developed relig- 
ious and philosophical systems had shown 
him the narrowness and puerility of his own 
faith, and as yet nothing had come to take its 
place. As a result of the social conditions 
which developed out of these changes men's 



120 PETRONIUS 

thoughts were turned in upon themselves, 
and their lives were given over to the gratifi- 
cation of their personal tastes. The literature 
of the period reflected the temper of the times, 
as a literature always does. The age of heroic 
achievement which could furnish an inspira- 
tion to lofty flights of the Muse was past. The 
labored efforts of Lucan in writing an epic on 
the civil war, and the artificial tragedies of 
Seneca, illustrate this fact for the generation of 
Petronius, if any illustration is needed. It was 
a period of introspection, when each man's 
thoughts were limited to himself and those 
about him, when he had no share and no 
interest in the greater concerns of politics or 
religion or philosophy. The realistic romance 
dealing with the affairs of everyday life is the 
natural product of such a state of society, and 
it was in such circumstances that the great 
realistic novel of Petronius, which is also, 
I think, the earliest-known romance of any 
sort, saw the light of day. It is a significant 
fact that prose fiction made its appearance 
after every other independent form of literature 
in prose and verse had come into existence 
and lived its life, so to speak. The same 
statement may be made of the development of 



PETRONIUS 1£1 

romance among the Greeks and in modern 
times. Prose fiction always seems to spring up 
in an imitative rather than in a creative literary 
period. As I have already said, only a portion 
of the work of Petronius is extant, but even the 
part left us forms an invaluable contribution 
to the literature of prose fiction, and furnishes 
a striking proof of the genius of its author. 

The action of the story in its complete form, 
as the contemporaries of Petronius had it, 
took place in certain Italian and provincial 
towns. Three principal episodes of consid- 
erable length have come down to us, and in 
them the scene is laid in two Italian towns. 
Some one has said that our own novelist 
Howells was the first writer to reproduce 
accurately the local color of different towns 
within the borders of the same country. I am 
afraid that Howells's supporters must yield to 
Petronius his claim to this distinction. When 
one follows the hero in the novel of Petronius 
from the shores of the Bay of Naples, where 
the scene is at first laid, to Croton, in South- 
ern Italy, he comes into an entirely different 
atmosphere. He passes out of the circle of 
Rome's influence. The provincial aristocracy 
of the little Campanian village, making its 



122 PETRONIUS 

crude attempts to imitate the manners of the 
metropolis, gives place to the elegant deprav- 
ity of a town which was essentially Greek in 
its mode of life ; and the differences which ex- 
isted between the two types of society are pre- 
sented in so subtle a fashion that even a close 
student, like Zola, of the characteristics which 
society of the same grade shows in different 
modern cities might admire the result. The 
hero of the romance is a Greek freedman who 
lives by his wits. Gathered about him in the 
story is a picturesque group of adventurers, 
parvenus, tradesmen, professional poets, fort- 
une hunters, and petty provincial magistrates. 
It is an interesting fact that in this novel of 
Petronius women for the first time, in so far 
as I know, play an important part in literature. 
The narrative literature of the earlier period 
deals mainly with the doings of men and their 
relations to one another, and it is primarily ad- 
dressed to men. A late writer has acutely sur- 
mised that the romance of chivalry was writ- 
ten for women, and that we owe to them the 
beginnings of the modern novel. What has 
just been noted of the Satirse of Petronius 
would indicate the same origin for the ancient 
novel with equal probability. 



PETRONIUS U3 

In Greek and Roman epic and tragic poetry 
a primary motive was regularly employed 
which is not regarded as essential in modern 
literature; I mean the wrath of an offended 
deity or the unpitying action of fate. It is 
true that heredity in the prose dramas of Ibsen 
and society in many of the so-called problem 
novels of to-day serve the same dramatic pur- 
pose, but that element is not an essential one 
with us, and a modern author in composing 
a piece of imaginative literature would not 
feel bound to introduce it. We are likely, 
therefore, to forget that it was an essential 
factor with the Romans. Although he was 
creating a new form of literature, Petronius 
observes literary conventions in introducing 
this factor. The mishaps of his rascally hero 
are due to the anger of Priapus, who was as 
much an object of ridicule as of reverence 
among the Romans. The introduction of this 
motive and the choice of this god as the 
offended deity give a unity to the story, and 
make it a delightful satire upon the epic. 
The hero, Encolpius, driven by his rascalities 
from one town to another, becomes a realistic 
Odysseus. The book satisfies our modern 
conception of a novel, then, in having a well- 



124 PETRONIUS 

defined plot, and it may also truly be said of 
it, I think, that each incident is a natural 
result of the action of two forces, the character 
of the hero and his environment. It must be 
confessed, however, that the development of 
the plot is not followed out as continuously in 
this ancient novel as it is in a modern one. 
Long episodes are introduced which do not 
help along the action, and the movement is 
frequently interrupted by literary disquisi- 
tions or by poems. 

In one important particular the novel of 
Petronius stands apart from all ancient imag- 
inative literature and takes its place by the side 
of our latest modern fiction : I mean in its real- 
ism. This is true of its individual incidents, 
of its portrayal of contemporaneous society, 
and of the way in which the various characters 
are presented. I have already mentioned the 
skill of Petronius in reproducing local color. 
But since the treatment is intensely realistic, 
while we have a true picture of a certain class, 
the romance of Petronius gives us a one-sided 
view of contemporaneous society, just as real- 
istic novels of the same type do to-day. The 
realistic treatment which Petronius has adopted 
in his novel puts it in marked contrast to the 



PETRONIUS 125 

early Greek romances, which appeared some- 
what later. The Marvellous Things Beyond 
Thule is a fair specimen of these productions. 
The hero and the heroine in this story, Dinias 
and Dercyllis by name, after surviving perils 
at the hands of robbers, assassins, and magi- 
cians; after witnessing murders, suicides, and 
resurrections; having exhausted the possibil- 
ities of adventure from Hades to the North 
Pole — are finally transported to the moon to 
round off their experiences. 

I am not aware that any one has called 
attention to the fact that the modern realistic 
novel made its first appearance in circum- 
stances very similar to those in which the ro- 
mance of Petronius was written. It is equally 
remarkable that in both cases the same phase 
of society is represented. The state of society 
in Spain in the sixteenth century, when the 
picaresque novel appeared, was the same as 
that of Italy in the first century of our era. 
In both countries the old aristocracy had dis- 
appeared, and a plutocracy had taken its 
place. The importation of slave labor had 
driven the peasant proprietors out of the coun- 
try districts of Italy, while in Spain a similar 
result was produced by the heavy taxes which 



U6 PETRONIUS 

made agriculture unprofitable. The Inquisi- 
tion in Spain, like the delatio in Italy, devel- 
oped a spirit of suspicion and selfishness, and 
broke the ties which ordinarily bind men to 
one another. The ancient and the modern 
realistic novel grew in similar soils. The re- 
semblance which the Spanish novel bears to 
its Latin predecessor is still more striking. 
Both are rogue stories; both are autobio- 
graphical; both are based on a careful study 
of society. Magic, the supernatural, and the 
element of perilous adventure are carefully 
excluded. The Spaniard as well as the Italian 
has made free use of the folk tale. His work, 
like that of Petronius, has a marked element 
of satire in it; and it bears the same relation 
to the romance of chivalry that the Latin novel 
bears to the epic. Such a marked resemblance 
in treatment would on a priori grounds lead 
one to think that Mendoza and Aleman found 
their inspiration in the Satirse of Petronius, 
but there seems to be no reason for supposing 
that either of them was familiar with the work 
of the Roman. The Italian and the Spanish 
realistic novel were spontaneous products of 
a similar situation. 

One of the fundamental principles of mod- 



PETRONIUS 127 

ern realism, as enunciated, for instance, by Zola 
and Howells and Garland, is that the char- 
acters of the persons concerned shall be re- 
vealed to the reader by their words and actions, 
without comment or explanation on the part 
of the author. This principle has been scrupu- 
lously observed by Petronius, and there is not 
a single instance in his novel where the artist 
destroys the illusion by obtruding his own 
personality into the scene he is painting. As 
for his characters, they stand out with marvel- 
lous distinctness — the roue Encolpius, the 
poetaster Eumolpus, the parvenu Trimalchio, 
and the shrewd housewife Fortunata. Even 
the minor characters are portrayed with as 
much clearness and individuality as the fig- 
ures in one of Meissonier's pictures. Let me 
try to convey a feeble impression from Petro- 
nius's own book of his cleverness in portraying 
minor characters and of the humor and 
sprightliness of his dialogue. The scene is a 
dinner party given by a parvenu. The guests 
are all or almost all freedmen, a rag merchant, 
a retired dealer in tombstones, an after-dinner 
poet, and men of that type. Conversation has 
become general under the mellowing influence 
of the Falernian, and the tedious, tactless Se- 



128 PETRONIUS 

leucus, who has just come from a funeral, dis- 
courses in a maudlin fashion on the insignifi- 
cance of man in the economy of nature, and 
proceeds to describe in detail the last sickness 
of his friend and the scenes at his funeral, 
until the plain speaker Phileros cuts short his 
lugubrious tale by remarking that the dear 
departed would pull a copper out of the mud 
with his teeth, if he got a chance, and that, 
having lived seventy years and left a round 
hundred thousand, he ought to have been 
satisfied. Ganymedes, the pessimist of the 
company, has been waiting impatiently for 
Phileros to bring his remarks to an end, and 
with that delightful inconsequence which 
characterizes the conversation of men of his 
type begins a long lament for the good old 
times, when the worthy Safinius flourished, 
whose oratorical power depended not on the 
new-fangled arts of logic and composition, but 
on the strength of his voice. With the men of 
that time you could play mora in the dark, but 
as for our days — well, the less said the better, 
and in view of the prevalent dishonesty and 
irreligion it's no wonder that times are bad 
and that the gods are rheumatic when we ask 
them to come to our relief. But the rag dealer. 



PETRONIUS 129 

Echion, has no such gloomy views of the Fa- 
therland. It's all in the way you look at things. 
In fact, if you lived somewhere else, you would 
be saying that pigs walked the streets here 
already roasted. In reality the future is very 
bright, for Titus is going to give a show at the 
amphitheatre, and there's every prospect of 
a fight to the finish, and it won't be anything 
like the show which Glyce gave with his 
hamstrung gladiators, who were ready to drop 
if you blew at them. And so the dinner goes 
merrily on, until the host, whose vanity grows 
more evident, calls for his will to be read. The 
reading of the will draws forth such loud waib 
and cries of lamentation from the slaves, who 
have an eye single to their own advancement, 
that the local fire company supposes the host's 
house to be on fire and comes rushing in with 
axes and ladders. The dinner is brought to an 
inglorious end. All of this — and the whole 
story, in fact — is told with delightful cynicism, 
a sparkling wit, and with charming simplicity 
and lucidity of style. 

Quintilian, the great Roman literary critic, 
confessed by implication that satire was the 
only new form of literature which his country- 
men had produced, and critics of subsequent 



130 PETRONIUS 

times have in the main accepted his dictum. 
It seems to me, however, that the Romans 
may successfully lay claim to the creation of 
prose fiction also. There is no earlier extant 
novel than that of Petronius, nor is there any 
reference in ancient literature to an earlier 
work of that sort, so far as I know, so that 
Petronius is at the same time the creator of a 
new genre of literature and the author of one 
of the world's greatest pieces of realistic fiction. 



A ROMAN PURITAN 

ONE ventures with some diflideiice upon 
the task of discussing the work of an 
author like the Roman poet Persius, 
whose writings are not widely known and are 
not highly esteemed by many who know them. 
But the obscurity in which Persius languishes 
is, it seems to me, undeserved; for his poetry 
has an intrinsic value ; he speaks for a class of 
men who have made a deep impression upon 
history; and any knowledge which we may 
gain of the influences at work in the first cen- 
tury of our era, in which his lot was cast, will 
doubtless always be of special value in our 
eyes. 

But whatever may be the attitude of the 
world in general toward Persius, to the New 
Englander he should be a writer of peculiar 
interest. Perhaps he of all men can most 
thoroughly understand his temperament and 
ideals; for an intimate acquaintance with the 
characteristics of the New England Puritan 
can best give one a correct view of the attitude 

131 



132 A ROMAN PURITAN 

of the Roman poet toward men and things; 
while a knowledge of the circumstances under 
which Puritanism developed will enable one 
to understand the times in which Persius lived 
and the motives and practices which he at- 
tacked, since the moral and intellectual con- 
dition of Rome under the Caesars was not 
essentially unlike that of England under the 
Stuarts. The spirit of the times was distinctly 
one of materialism and formalism. Rome 
and Italy were at the beginning of the Chris- 
tian era secure from invasion; peace brought 
in its train a desire for ease and luxury; the 
provinces sent their rich tribute to Rome to 
satisfy this desire, while the attractions of the 
metropolis, the introduction of slave labor 
everywhere throughout Italy, and the conse- 
quent displacement of free labor, brought an 
immense idle population to the city, whose 
eager demands for bread and the games 
brooked no refusal. Matthew Arnold has 
divided the English people of to-day into bar- 
barians, philistines and populace. In the 
Rome of Persius, the philistines, that great 
middle class which preserves longest the 
homely virtues as well as the narrow preju- 
dices of a people, had in large measure disap- 



A ROMAN PURITAN 133 

peared. There were left a vulgarized aris- 
tocracy and a brutalized proletariat. By the 
side of this materialism was a formalism in 
the higher activities of life like that against 
which the English Puritan inveighed. Sacri- 
fices were still made in the temples, the people 
still met as if to choose their magistrates, but 
effective faith in the old Roman gods was 
dead and the political assemblies of the people 
only registered the wishes of the emperor. 

It was in a society of this sort, a society 
whose vices and weaknesses Juvenal scourges 
and Martial complacently paints, that Persius 
passed his life. In his own writings Persius, 
unlike Horace, his predecessor in satire, tells 
us little about himself, but a brief memoir 
from an unknown hand gives us the essential 
facts of his life. He was born in 34 A. D., in a 
little town of Etruria, and died in 62. His 
family was one of rank and wealth, and he 
was able to secure the training in literature 
and philosophy which his studious tastes 
craved. He had a pleasing appearance, was 
gentle in his manner, modest and abstemious. 
The large property which he left behind him 
at death he bequeathed to his mother and sis- 
ter, while his library, which, significantly 



134 A ROMAN PURITAN 

enough, was made up of the seven hundred 
volumes of the philosopher Chrysippus, was 
left to his Stoic teacher, Cornutus. One of 
the most charming passages in his satires, one 
of the few passages, in fact, in which he un- 
bends, is that in which he expresses his grati- 
tude to his friend and teacher: "When the 
purple garb of youth resigned its dreaded 
guardianship, and the toys of my boyhood 
were cast a^side and hung up as an offering to 
the quaint old household gods, when my com- 
rades enticed me and the snow-white toga of 
manhood proclaimed my right to cast my eyes 
at will over the whole Subura, I threw myself 
as a son into thine arms, and thou didst take 
me up, Cornutus, in my tender years into thy 
Socratic bosom.'* 

The friendship and counsel of Cornutus 
and of his other Stoic teachers was indeed the 
determining factor in his early life. This 
group of Stoics to which Persius attached him- 
self was made of the same stern stuff as our 
Puritan ancestors under Cromwell ; and many 
of them, like Psetus Thrasea, their leader, 
suffered martyrdom rather than abate one jot 
or tittle of their ethical or political creed. 
They accepted Cato of Utica as their model. 



A ROMAN PURITAN 135 

and had no sympathy with the school of Sen- 
eca, that great teacher of their time, who 
sought to adapt the principles of Stoic philos- 
ophy to the practices of the Roman court. 
The sympathies of Persius lay with this fac- 
tion of the Stoic school, for, as his biographer 
tells us, he knew Seneca, but was not attracted 
by him, and it is interesting to note that one of 
his earliest compositions consisted of verses 
in commemoration of his kinswoman Arria, 
of whose tragic death Pliny tells us. The story 
is a favorite one with Latin writers. Arria's 
husband, Psetus, was charged with participa- 
tion in a conspiracy against the Emperor 
Claudius — unjustly, and yet his conviction 
was sure. Without waiting for the outcome 
of the trial, Arria in the presence of her hus- 
band drew a dagger, plunged it into her breast, 
and after drawing it out handed it to her 
husband, saying, ** It does not hurt, Paetus." 
The fact that he was brought up under such 
influences and drew his inspiration from such 
incidents as these gave to Persius, who was an 
idealist, whose only knowledge of the world 
was that which may be had from one's study 
windows, that intensity of purpose which 
characterizes his poetry, his narrow and dis- 



136 A ROMAN PURITAN 

torted view of men and things, and even that 
tone of cant of which we seem to catch an 
echo now and then in his verses. 

From his absorbing faith in Stoicism and 
his desire to rescue those who did not know its 
teachings from their ignorance and vice came 
his impulse to write. His inspiration springs 
from the same overmastering desire as does 
that of Lucretius; and it is a noteworthy fact 
that the most impressive expositions which we 
have in Latin of the tenets of Epicureanism 
and Stoicism, the two most influential schools 
of philosophy in Rome, are in verse, in the 
poems of Lucretius and Persius. It is not 
strange that Persius should have chosen satire 
as the literary vehicle of his thoughts. Greek 
philosophy in passing through the transform- 
ing alembic of the Roman mind acquired a 
practical character and was developed on the 
side of ethics. Stoicism in Rome taught, as 
one has said, "purer conceptions of God, 
broader views of humanity, the supremacy of 
the will over the passions, of eternal duty over 
temporal expediency." Now, the recognized 
literary medium for the correction of vice and 
instruction in virtue is satire. It was a natu- 
ral thing for Persius, therefore, to adopt this 



A ROMAN PURITAN 137 

form of composition. His own uncompro- 
mising attitude also toward the vices and 
weaknesses of mankind made the choice a 
natural one. Perhaps, too, a perusal of the 
works of his great predecessor, Lucilius, may 
have influenced his decision, as his biographer 
intimates. 

But the doctrines which Persius wishes to 
teach are of such transcendent importance 
that literature, at the best, is an unsatisfactory 
means by which to accomplish his purpose. 
He does not hesitate, therefore, to express his 
contempt for literary art and for literature it- 
self. It is but the chattering of parrots, and 
finds its inspiration in the need of bread and 
butter. **Who made the parrot so glib with 
his *Good morning,' and who taught the 
magpie to attempt the feat of talking like men ? 
That great teacher of art and giver of mother 
wit, the stomach." Of his own inspiration he 
is equally contemptuous. "I have not bathed 
my lips in the spring of the hack, nor do I re- 
member to have dreamed on two-peaked Par- 
nassus, so as to burst upon the stage as a full- 
fledged poet. It is but as a poor half-brother 
of the guild that I bring my verses to the fes- 
tival of the worshipful poets' company," 



138 A ROMAN PURITAN 

In view of his attitude toward literature, his 
disregard of literary usage in the construction 
of the satire does not surprise us. Following 
his predecessor, Horace, he adopts the dia- 
logue form at the beginning of his satires, but 
like a disputant who is convinced of the truth 
of his own cause and the weakness of his ad- 
versary's logic, he brooks no opposition, and 
the second speaker is soon overwhelmed and 
disappears under the torrent of the poet's in- 
vective. We shall find later another factor 
also, which contributed to the same result. 

In one of his Lowell lectures Prince Wol- 
konsky has brought out in a luminous way the 
dual personality of his countryman, Tolstoi, 
the artist, and philosopher. He has shown 
that the two are at variance with each other 
in Tolstoi's writings, and that at one moment 
it is the philosopher who speaks, at another 
the artist. The same statement may be made 
with truth of our Roman writer. The Stoic 
Persius finds literature and literary art vanity 
and vexation of spirit; but the poet Persius 
escapes at times from the domination of his 
other self and gives us a touch of real life or 
a bit of imaginative writing. Now and then 
the philosopher, or rather the moralist, and 



A ROMAN PURITAN 139 

the poet are in harmony. Such is the ease 
when he concludes his impassioned arraign- 
ment of the materialism and formalism which 
characterized the religion of his day. "Let us 
rather give to the gods of heaven such an offer- 
ing as the degenerate son of the great Messalla 
has no means of giving even out of his huge 
sacrificial charger, — a soul in which duty to 
God and man are rightly blended, purity in 
the inmost recesses of the heart, a breast filled 
with the sense of honor and nobility. Let me 
have these to carry to the temple, and a hand- 
ful of meal shall win me acceptance." 

Inspired as Persius was by a singleness of 
purpose to teach the truth of Stoicism, it is not 
strange that almost all of his satires are based 
upon some dogma of the Stoic creed. One is 
an attack upon shams, another an invective 
against low spiritual standards, while in a third 
the thesis is established that all save the wise 
men are slaves. To state the doctrines which 
our poet teaches in his satires would be equiv- 
alent to summarizing the creed of Puritanism. 
The dogma that all men are slaves is but the 
ancient version of total depravity. The sav- 
ing remnant of the wise men are the elect of 
the New England Puritan. The doctrine that 



140 A ROMAN PURITAN 

we are what God has willed us to be might 
have been taken from the popular Calvinistic 
creed of our New England fathers; and when 
Persius teaches that he who offends in one 
point offends in all, he is only anticipating the 
Mosaic dogma of the Massachusetts and 
Connecticut minister, while pervading all is 
that intensity of conviction and that practical 
belief in the transcendent importance of ques- 
tions of theology and morals which cast so 
sombre a hue over the whole life of our New 
England ancestors. In fact, when I read the 
verses of Persius I seem to be sitting where 
I sat as a boy, in a high-backed pew of the old 
meeting-house, listening to the minister as he 
expounds the doctrines of foreordination, of 
election, and original sin. 

The view which we have taken of Persius 
throws light upon that much-vexed question 
of his relation to Horace. Horace adopts the 
dialogue form in his satires, and preserves the 
identity of his characters with great circum- 
spection, and his characters are men of flesh 
and blood. Persius attempts to follow his 
predecessor in this particular, but his speak- 
ers soon fade away into the indefinite "you." 
This difference in literary method illustrates 



A ROMAN PURITAN 141 

well the essential difference in character be- 
tween the two men. Horace's conclusions are 
based upon his own observation of individ- 
uals. His words are therefore addressed to 
individuals and his arguments are based upon 
practical truths adapted to each particular 
case. Persius is so overwhelmed by the truth 
of his proposition and its applicability to all 
men, that he is not content with assailing all 
through one, but he must reach the whole 
world directly. Furthermore Cicero, with his 
tolerant eclecticism, and Horace, with his 
comfortable epicureanism, recognized the good 
as well as the bad in human nature. Both of 
them, trained in the school of experience, had 
come to look with a forgiving eye upon the 
foibles and weaknesses of mankind. But in 
the Puritanical philosophy of the young ideal- 
ist, Persius, he who breaks the law in one 
point breaks it in all, and there is no line of 
difference to be drawn between the great sin 
and the little sin. The Socratic dialogue, 
therefore, which assumes that the second 
speaker has at least some show of reason on 
his side, and which both Cicero and Horace 
adopt in their discussions of manners and 
morals, is quite unsuitable for one who believes 



142 A ROMAN PURITAN 

that his opponent is radically wrong and 
utterly illogical. Persius is true, then, to his 
philosophical conviction in neglecting the 
dialogue form of composition. 

But Persius admires Horace. He follows 
him in fact as a literary model, and borrows 
turns of expression and illustrations from him 
constantly. The result is that, while the 
characters in Horace are drawn from life and 
stand out distinctly in the foreground, those 
in Persius are only reflections from the canvas 
of his predecessor. It is easy to find the reason 
for this difiFerence in the different training 
which the two men received. Horace's philos- 
ophy is a practical one. His conclusions have 
been reached from an inductive study of 
the facts coming under his own observation. 
The order with Persius is the reverse : First the 
principle, then its application to real life. 
The individual is therefore only an evanescent 
illustration, one of a thousand. The dropping 
of a stone from the roof of a house illustrates 
the operation of the law of gravity ; but we do 
not wait with suspended judgment to see 
whether it will fall or not, for the existence of 
the law should be already known to every 
thinking creature. With such a contempt, 



A ROMAN PURITAN 14S 

therefore, for the individual case, it was quite 
natural for Persius, when casting about him 
for an illustration, to take it not from contem- 
porary society, but from the pages of Horace, 
which he had before him, without due regard 
sometimes to the appropriateness of the ex- 
ample. 

Yet, strange to say, Persius is not lacking 
in dramatic power. These, for instance, are 
the words in which he describes the real pun- 
ishment for sin and the true terrors of remorse : 
** We pray thee, O Father of the Gods, to pun- 
ish the monsters of tyranny in no other wise 
than this, — let them look upon virtue and 
grieve that they have lost her forever. Were 
the groans from the brazen bull of Sicily more 
terrible or did the sword that hung from the 
gilded cornice strike more dread into the 
princely neck beneath it than that state of mind 
when a man whispers to himself, *I am going 
headlong to ruin,' and pales, unhappy wretch, 
at a thought which the very wife of his bosom 
may not share?" 

Persius is, in fact, terribly in earnest. He 
is not the mere philosopher who expounds 
abstract principles, without caring whether 
they are applied or not. He is also a moralist. 



144 A ROMAN PURITAN 

and a moralist of the school to which John 
Knox, John Wesley, and Whitefield belonged, 
a moralist who sees the impassable chasm 
which lies between good and evil and who 
believes in the natural depravity of all men 
and the moral death which threatens them. 
Such men have always been endowed with 
great dramatic power, and Persius is no ex- 
ception to the rule. Indeed it is in the pos- 
session of this quality that his chief merit as a 
poet consists. 



PETRARCH'S LETTERS TO CICERO 

GEORG VOIGT in his Wiederbelebung 
des klassischen Alterthums speaks of 
Petrarch as der Entdecker der neuen 
Welt des Humanismus, and, in view of the 
part which he played in the Revival of Learn- 
ing, these words of praise are not extravagant. 
In the catalogues which have come down to us 
from the Middle Ages one finds now and then 
the title of a Greek or Latin classic, and a few 
men of learning would seem to have taken 
some interest in reading these books; but 
long before Petrarch's day real knowledge of 
the works of antiquity was at a low ebb. Even 
Dante came but little under the influence of 
the new learning. 

With Petrarch the new era begins. His 
energy and care in collecting and preserving 
those works of the past which were already 
known, his enthusiasm in bringing to light 
books which had fallen into oblivion, his sym- 
pathy with the classical spirit, and his power to 

145 



146 PETRARCH'S LETTERS 

inspire others gave the first impulse to the new 
movement and were potent factors in advanc- 
ing it. 

His interest in Latin literature dated back 
to his boyhood days, and is well illustrated 
by a story of his early life. Petrarch's father, 
who was an advocate, intended to have his 
son take up the profession of law, and with this 
object in view sent him to Bologna, but after 
a time, feeling that the young man was not 
advancing as rapidly as he expected, the 
father sought for the reason of his son's slow 
progress, and found it in the shape of a large 
collection of the Latin classics concealed under 
Petrarch's bed. These were thrown uncere- 
moniously into the fire, but the grief and anger 
which Petrarch showed induced his father to 
save a Cicero and a Virgil from the flames, and 
revealed the depth of the young man's passion 
for Latin literature. This passion animated 
him through life, for in later years, he tells us 
in one of his letters, whenever on making a 
journey he noticed a monastery near the road, 
he invariably turned aside to see if he could 
discover a book not in his own collection. Not 
content with his own investigations he sent 
requests and urgent entreaties to friends and 



TO CICERO 147 

acquaintances in Italy, France, Germany, and 
England for any books which could be found 
in the neighborhood of his correspondents. 
The works of Cicero were the special objects 
of his search, and by his indefatigable efforts 
he brought to light, among other things, the 
Philippics of that author, some of his philo- 
sophical works, and the orations for Archias 
and for Milo. 

The crowning event of Petrarch's life, how- 
ever, lay in the discovery of a collection of 
Cicero's Letters in the cathedral library at 
Verona in 1345 A. D., and, although he was 
weary and ill at the time, he would not intrust 
the manuscript to other hands, but he himself 
made a copy of it. He regarded the book as 
his most precious possession, and so highly did 
he prize it that he never allowed a copy to be 
made of it, but he published the knowledge 
of his discovery to the world in a letter ad- 
dressed to Cicero himself. This letter pos- 
sesses a double interest for us. It was written 
when Petrarch was full of the first joy of his 
discovery, and therefore fixes the date and the 
place at which Cicero's Letters were made 
known to the world again. It records also the 
first impressions which Petrarch received from 



148 PETRARCH'S LETTERS 

reading the familiar letters which Cicero wrote 
to his intimate friends. He had read some 
of the orations and some of the philosophical 
works of Cicero. Now he took up the letters 
for the first time, and it is interesting to com- 
pare Petrarch's impressions with those which 
we form to-day, for we also usually read the 
writings of Cicero in the same order. His let- 
ter runs as follows : 

FRANCIS PETRARCH SENDS GREETINGS TO 
M. TULLIUS CICERO 

Thy letters, sought long and earnestly, and 
found where I least thought to find them, I 
have read with the greatest eagerness. I have 
listened to thee, Marcus TuUius, as thou didst 
talk of many matters, as thou didst lament 
many ills, as thou didst throw upon many 
subjects the transforming light of thine intel- 
ligence, and I, who had long known what sort 
oi a guide thou hadst been to others, have at 
last understood what kind of a man thou wert 
to thyself. Do thou in turn, wherever thou 
art, listen to this one word, which is inspired by 
true love for thee, a word not now of advice 
but of regret, to which one of the after world 
who is most devoted to thy memory has given 
utterance not without tears. Thou who wert 
ever restless and full of anxiety, or that thou 
mayest hear again thine own words, O head- 
strong and unfortunate old man, why hast 



TO CICERO 149 

thou plunged into so many struggles and 
quarrels which would profit thee in no wise 
whatsoever? Where hast thou left the peace 
of mind which befitted both thine age and thy 
profession and thy fortune ? What counter- 
feit glitter of fame has involved thee as an old 
man in wars where young men fought, and 
hurried thee, the sport of every ]blast of fort- 
une, to a death unworthy of a philosopher? 
Alas! unmindful both of a brother's advice 
and of thine own wholesome precepts — many 
as they are — like a traveller by night waving 
a torch in the darkness, thou hast shown to 
those who should follow the path upon which 
thou thyself hast so sadly slipped. I say noth- 
ing of Dionysius, I say nothing of thy brother 
and nephew, I say nothing, if thou dost not 
wish it, even of Dolabella himself, all of whom 
thou art now exalting to heaven with words 
of praise, and now abusing with unexpected 
maledictions. Perchance these acts of thine 
could be overlooked. I pass over Julius Caesar 
also, whose well-tried clemency became a 
haven of refuge for those who attacked him. 
Furthermore, I say nothing of Pompeius 
Magnus, with whom, through a certain tie of 
intimacy, thou didst seem to have power 
without limit. But what madness incited thee 
against Antony ? It was love of the Repub- 
lic, I suppose, the Republic which thou didst 
confess was already utterly ruined. But if it 
was true loyalty, if it was love of liberty which 
led thee on, a view which one may hold in the 



150 PETRARCH'S LETTERS 

case of so great a man, why so close an inti- 
macy with Augustus? What reply wilt thou 
make, pray, to thy friend Brutus? If it be 
true, he says,* that Octavius pleases thee, thou 
wilt not seem to have avoided a master, but 
to have sought a more friendly master. This 
unhappy event was reserved for thee, and this 
was the crowning misfortune in thy career, 
Cicero, that of this very man whom thou hadst 

F raised so highly thou shouldst speak bitterly, 
will not say because he did thee harm, but 
because he did not withstand those who were 
doing thee harm. I grieve at thy lot, my 
friend, I feel shame and pity at the thought of 
thy great mistakes; and now like this very 
Brutus I give no credit to those precepts, in 
which I know thou wert thoroughly versed. 
What profits it forsooth to teach others; what 
boots it to speak always of the virtues in the 
most fitting language, if meanwhile thou dost 
not listen to thyself? Ah! how much better 
it would have been for a philosopher, of all 
men, to have grown old in the country far 
from strife, while thinking, as thou dost thyself 
say in one place, of the life everlasting, and 
not of this present brief existence; how much 
better not to have had the fasces^ not to have 
eagerly craved a triumph, how much better 
had a Catiline never excited thine anger. But 
of this we talk in vain. Farewell forever, my 
Cicero. In the world above, on the right bank 

» In an extant letter to Cicero (ad Brut. I, 16, 1) which is prob- 
ably spurious, however. 



TO CICERO 151 

of the Athesis, in the city of Verona in Trans- 
padane Italy, on the sixteenth day before the 
Kalends of the fifth month, in the year from 
the birth of that Christ whom thou didst not 
know, thirteen hundred and forty-five. 

The first perusal of Cicero's Letters proved 
a shock to Petrarch. Could this vain and 
vacillating mortal, who taught men to be strong 
and temperate, while he himself was weak and 
passionate, be the Cicero who had thundered 
against a Catiline and an Antony, whose praise 
of philosophy had charmed even St. Augus- 
tine ? But as Petrarch read the letters again 
a new light broke upon him. The words of 
confidence which one pours into the ear of his 
"other self" should not condemn a man any 
more than the questionings of one's own 
heart. If Cicero's broad view of the future 
made him hesitate when a narrow-minded 
man saw only the straight path of duty before 
him, yet in the end he followed duty, and his 
genius at last was still a source of inspiration 
and life, and the recognition of this last fact 
inspired Petrarch to the composition of an- 
other letter to Cicero six months after the one 
already given. 



152 PETRARCH'S LETTERS 



FRANCIS PETRARCH SENDS GREETING TO 
M. TULLIUS CICERO 

If my former letter oflf ended thee, for what 
thy friend in the Andria says, as thou thyself 
art wont to remark, is true, that *' complaisance 
maketh friends, truth begetteth hatred," listen 
to that which may in part appease the anger of 
thy soul, and let not truth always be hateful 
in thine eyes, for we are angry at true words of 
blame, we are pleased by true words of praise. 
It is true, Cicero, and let me say it with thy 
consent, that thou didst live as a man, thou 
didst speak as an orator, thou didst write as 
a philosopher. It was thy life with which I 
found fault, not thy talent nor thine eloquence; 
in fact, I wonder at the one, I am lost in admi- 
ration of the other. And yet in thy life I find 
nothing lacking save steadfastness and the 
love of repose, which belongs of right to a 
philosopher's life, and a desire to avoid civil 
wars — since freedom was dead and the Re- 
public already buried amid the sorrows of its 
adherents. 

See in what a different way I treat thee from 
the way in which thou didst treat Epicurus in 
many places, but in particular in the work, 
De Finibus.* For thou dost everywhere ap- 
prove of his life, while thou dost ridicule his 
claims to talent. I ridicule thee in no wise, 
still, as I have said, I feel a compassion for thee 

» For instance, De Fin. II, 80. 



TO CICERO 153 

in view of thy life, I congratulate thee upon 
thy genius and thine eloquence. O most ex- 
alted father of Roman eloquence, not I alone, 
but all of us who are adorned with the beauties 
of the Latin tongue, render thee our thanks; 
for we refresh our fields from thy streams, we 
frankly confess that we have been directed by 
thy guidance, aided by thine opinions, and 
illumined by thy light; that finally under 
thine auspices, so to say, we have gained this 
power and inspiration to write, however small 
it may be. Another has come into our lives 
also, as a guide upon the path of poetry ; since 
necessity called for one whom we might fol- 
low as ne advanced with the free step of the 
poet, a leader, too (in prose) of measured 
tread it sought, one whose speech, one whose 
songs, we might admire, since if both of you 
will pardon me, neither was a master in both 
prose and poetry. He is no match for thee in 
breadth of vision nor thou for him in the per- 
ception of subtleties. Perchance I am not the 
first to say this, however deeply I feel it ; in fact 
one expressed this opinion before I did, or 
rather he said the sentiment had been ex- 
pressed by others — a great man, too, Annseus 
Seneca,* of Cordova, from whom, as this very 
man complains, not thine old age indeed, but 
the fury of the civil wars took thee. He could 
have seen thee, but he did not see thee; still 
he was an enthusiastic eulogist of thy works 

1 Seneca, the rhetorician, was bom in 54 B. C, i. e., eleven 
years before Cicero's death. 



154 PETRARCH'S LETTERS 

and of the works of the other writer referred 
to above. In his pa^es, therefore, each person 
circumscribed by his own limitations in the 
way of eloquence is bidden to yield to thee, his 
contemporary, and to take his place among 
the many. But I torment thee with curiosity; 
who, pray, is this leader, thou dost ask ? Thou 
knowest the man, if only thou dost remember 
his name. It is Publius Virgilius Maro, a citi- 
zen of Mantua, of whom thou didst prophesy 
illustrious things. For when, as we read in 
the books, after admiring a certain juvenile 
little work of his, thou hadst inquired who the 
author was, and hadst thyself, already an old 
man, seen him, who was a youth, thou wert 
delighted, and from the inexhaustible foun- 
tain of thine eloquence, thou didst render him 
a tribute, combined, it is true, with praise of 
thyself, yet well-founded and glorious and 
honorable. For thou didst say, "Rome's 
second great hope." And this saying, heard 
from thy lips, pleased him in such a degree, 
and remained so firmly in his memory, that 
twenty years afterward, when thou hadst been 
long removed from the affairs of men, he 
placed it in his divine work in exactly the 
same words, and had it been permitted thee to 
see this work, thou wouldst have rejoiced to 
think that from the first flower thou hadst fore- 
seen so unerringly the fruit destined to come. 
Likewise thou wouldst have congratulated the 
Latin Muses because they had either left a 
doubtful victory to the haughty Greeks, or 



TO CICERO 155 

wrested a sure one from them; for each opin- 
ion has its sponsors. I doubt not that thou, 
if from thy books I have learned thy mind, 
which I seem to myself to know as if I had 
lived with thee, I doubt not that thou, I say, 
wilt be the champion of the latter view, and 
that as thou hast given to Latium the palm in 
oratory,* so thou wilt in poetry, and that thou 
wilt have already bidden the Iliad to yield to 
the iEneid, which concession from the very 
beginning of Virgil's work Propertius did not 
hesitate to demand. For when he contem- 
plated the beginnings of the Pierian work, 
what he thought of them and what he hoped, 
he proclaimed openly in these verses : 

"I cry you, yield ye Roman writers, yield ye Greeks; 
An offspring greater than the Iliad is born ? " * 

So much for the second Latin leader in elo- 
quence and the second hope of mighty Rome; 
now I return to thee. What I think of thy life, 
what of thy genius thou hast heard. Thou 
art waiting to hear of thy books, what fortune 
has befallen them, to what extent they are 
admired, whether it be by the common people 
or by the learned. There are extant then noble 
works of thine which we are able, let me not 
say, to read through, nay, not even to enumer- 
ate. The fame of thy deeds is widespread, and 
thy name is great and fills the ears of men ; but 
the studious are very few in number, whether 

J Tu9c. DUp. I, 3. « Prop. Ill, 26, 65-6. 



156 PETRARCH'S LETTERS 

the cause He in the sternness of the times or 
in the dulness and sluggishness of men's 
minds, or what I the rather think, in the 
greed for gain which drives the thoughts of 
men toward other ends. Therefore some of 
thy books, unless I am deceived, have with- 
out doubt been lost, perhaps hopelessly, to us 
who live to-day ; to my great grief, to the great 
shame of our generation, to the great loss of 
posterity. For it has not seemed shameful 
enough to neglect the cultivation of our own 
talents, so that coming generations receive 
therefrom nothing of profit, but we must 
needs bring to naught the fruit of thy labor 
and of the labor of thy countrymen by a neglect 
utterly cruel and intolerable. For what I la- 
ment has happened in the case of thy books 
and in the case of many works of illustrious 
men. As my remarks just now were concern- 
ing thy books, these are the titles of those 
whose loss is the more noteworthy : the De Re 
Publica, the De Re Familiari, the De Re Mili- 
tari, the De Laude Philosophiae, the De Con- 
solatione, and the De Gloria, although with 
reference to this last work, there is rather an 
uncertain hope than a fixed despair.^ Nay, 
we have lost large parts even of thine extant 
works, so that, just as if they had been over- 
whelmed in a great struggle by oblivion and 
neglect, we must mourn for leaders, some of 

> A manuscript which he believed to be one of the De Gloria 
Petrarch had loaned to a friend. It was not returned, and no 
manuscript of the work has been found since that time. 



TO CICERO 157 

whom are dead, others, mutilated or lost. For 
this state of things, which we suffer in the case 
of many other books, exists especially with ref- 
erence to the Academica and the books upon 
the Orator and the Laws, which have sur- 
vived in so mutilated and disfigured a condi- 
tion that it would really have been better for 
them had they perished. 

Now thou dost wish to hear of the condition 
of the city of Rome and of the Roman State, 
to learn what the state of the fatherland is, to 
know in what degree the citizens are har- 
monious, to whom the control of affairs has 
fallen, by what hands the reins of government 
are held — whether wisely managed or not; 
whether the Danube and the Ganges, the 
Ebro and the Nile and the Don are our bound- 
ary lines; or has some leader risen "to limit 
our sway by the ocean, our fame by the 
stars," ^ or "to extend our domain beyond 
the Garamantes and the Indians," ^ as says 
that Mantuan friend of thine. I surmise that 
thou wilt hear most eagerly these things and 
things like them ; for thy loyalty increases this 
natural eagerness, and thy love for the father- 
land, leading even to thy ruin, is known to 
every one. But it may be better to say noth- 
ing. For believe me, Cicero, if thou shalt 
have heard in what condition our affairs are, 
tears will fall from thine eyes in whatever 
portion of the world above or the world below 

» Virg. Aen. I, 287. 
« Ibid. VI, 794. 



158 PETRARCH'S LETTERS 

thou dost chance to be. Farewell forever. 
In the world above, upon the left bank of the 
Rhone in Transalpine Gaul in the same year, 
on the 16th day before the Kalends of January. 



LITERATURE AND THE COMMON 
PEOPLE OF ROME 

IN the last twenty-five years or more the 
study of political history has undergone 
a marked change. The common people, 
as the true subject-matter of the historian's 
study, have come into their rights. We hear 
more of their political aspirations and social 
conditions, less of the policies and ambitious 
plans of their rulers and leaders. Can we 
apply this new method of studying the Roman 
people to the field of literature as well as to 
that of politics ? We have made our estimates 
of the great Roman writers and have fixed the 
place which their productions are to hold in 
the world's literary history. Can we turn now 
to the average Roman and get any light on his 
literary interests and his appreciation of liter- 
ature? We shall find no categorical state- 
ments to help us from contemporary sources, 
because the professional writer, like Arbus- 
cula, the actress, probably had a profound 
contempt for the judgment of the common 

159 



160 LITERATURE AND THE 

people in such matters; but a bit of evidence 
here and a bit there will assist us in answering 
the question, and lead us to a truer estimate 
of this side of Roman civilization, I hope. 
How the Greeks would be rated, if such a 
study were made of them no one of us would 
doubt. The intellectual acuteness and the 
high aesthetic standards of the average citizen 
of Athens are rarely called in question. Even 
those whose sympathies lie with the aims and 
tendencies of modern society freely recognize 
these qualities in Greek civilization. 

The common people of Rome never reached 
the high plane which the Athenians attained 
in this respect, and they have suffered, suffered 
unduly, I think, in comparison with their 
more cultured neighbors. We often seem to me 
in our study of historical people and events to 
show too great a pleasure in contrasts. If 
with Mommsen, for instance, we brand Cicero 
as a political time-server, the far-sightedness 
of his great contemporary Caesar will stand 
out the more clearly. If, on the other hand, 
we take a more favorable view of Cicero's 
character, we are prone to touch up the dark 
spots in his career, to paint him as the cham- 
pion of law and order, with the sombre figure 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 161 

of Caesar, the revolutionist, by his side, to 
make the contrast. We are incHned to follow 
the same practice in our treatment of two 
peoples who show certain points of difference. 
By exaggerating these and by obscuring their 
points of similarity we stimulate the imagi- 
nation, secure for the reader a clear mental 
picture of the two contrasted peoples, and 
heighten the dramatic effect. It is convenient, 
too, to label and pigeon-hole people and 
things. It is simple and has a show of system 
to say that the Greeks had sesthetic qualities 
but no political steadiness; that the Romans 
showed marvellous political genius, but lacked 
an appreciation of the finer things of life. 
Our estimate of the Romans in this matter 
has suffered from both these tendencies, to 
contrast and to classify. So far as our judg- 
ment of them is concerned, it was unfortunate 
that fate did not put Rome a thousand years 
earlier or later and thus save us from the 
temptation of using such light and dark colors 
respectively in drawing our outlines of the 
two peoples. It was this unkindness of fate, 
I fancy, which is partly responsible for the 
common belief that the Romans were philis- 
tines in art and literature, for the feeling for 



162 LITERATURE AND THE 

instance, that Mummius, the conqueror of 
Corinth, was a typical Roman. The story 
connected with his name will be recalled We 
are told that when he was bringing back from 
Corinth the priceless works of art which he 
had taken in the capture of the city, he stipu- 
lated with the owners of the vessels who 
transported them that if they were lost at sea 
"they should be replaced by others of equal 
value." 

This natural tendency to set up a compari- 
son between the Greeks and the Romans has 
colored our estimates of the Romans in an- 
other way, it seems to me. Most of us will 
freely confess, I presume, that their literary 
productions fall below those of the Greeks in 
originality and in perfection of form. But do 
we stop to think that in passing this judgment 
we are estimating the achievements of their 
professional literary men ? They were un- 
doubtedly under the domination of the Greeks. 
It could not have been otherwise. In the 
third century before Christ, at the very begin- 
ning of Rome's literary history, her writers 
were brought into contact with the highly per- 
fected literature of Greece. If they had not 
striven to imitate it they would have sinned 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 163 

against the light, and yet when I speculate on 
what they might have done in the field of lit- 
erature if their national genius had been 
allowed to follow its natural lines of develop- 
ment, I sometimes find my sympathy going 
out to the elder Cato in his fierce Chauvinistic 
protest against everything of Greek origin. 
The Romans, like their Trojan ancestors, 
might well have feared the Greeks even when 
they were bringing gifts. Let us frankly con- 
fess that professional writers among the Ro- 
mans never escaped entirely from the influence 
of their great models, but let us not extend our 
judgment to the common people and tacitly 
assume that they were lacking in the aesthetic 
sense because that faculty, from lack of oppor- 
tunity, never showed any signs of independent 
development among the professional literary 
men and artists of Rome. 

It is important to distinguish between these 
two elements in the population in asking our- 
selves who the favorite authors of the Romans 
were. In making their choice of Greek plays 
for adaptation into Latin Plautus and Terence 
have indicated their preferences clearly enough. 
Cicero's frequent quotations from Ennius 
reveal his great admiration for that author 



164 LITERATURE AND THE 

and his intimate acquaintance with his writ- 
ings. Horace tells us his likes and dislikes in 
almost every one of his literary Satires and 
Epistles, and in one of them we see him setting 
out for the country with copies of Plato, Me- 
nander, Eupolis, and Archilochus packed up 
in his luggage. But who were the favorite 
poets of the people ? With what Latin writers 
were they familiar.? What kind of literature 
did they admire? What were their literary 
standards ? 

Perhaps among any people the condition of 
the drama furnishes the safest and clearest 
indication of literary taste. In an age when 
the circulation of literature in a written form 
was inconsiderable it is our only means of 
judgment. If we apply this test to the Ro- 
man people, and turn first to Plautus and 
Terence, we naturally call to mind the apolo- 
getic tone which Terence takes in several of 
his prologues, which seems to imply a slight 
interest in the drama on the part of his con- 
temporaries ; yet a careful reading of these pro- 
logues brings out clearly the fact that Terence 
was not disturbed about the attitude of the 
great body of his audience, but was defending 
himself against the strictures on his technique 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 165 

of the new dramatic school, led by the rival 
poet Luscius Lanuvinus. In fact, the Eu- 
nuchus won such immediate approval at the 
hands of the people that, if we may believe 
Suetonius, it was brought out twice in the 
same day. However, the well-known pro- 
logues of the Hecyra have been thought to 
show conclusively the absence of real literary 
interest on the part of the Romans. Twice 
the play had been attempted, and both times 
it had failed to hold the audience. On its first 
presentation, as the veteran actor Ambivius 
states in his pathetic appeal for a hearing, a 
company of rope dancers outside emptied the 
theatre; at the second trial the rumor that 
a gladiatorial performance was going on 
raised such an uproar that the actors were 
unable to proceed. When I read the Hecyra 
I am almost inclined to think that the unfa- 
vorable reception with which it met indicates 
rather good literary judgment on the part of 
the Roman audience than an absence of lit- 
erary taste. It is confessedly the weakest of 
Terence's plays, and the early part in particular 
is tedious. Then too, in trying to draw a cor- 
rect inference from an incident like this one, 
ought we not to bear in mind the difference 



166 LITERATURE AND THE 

between the Anglo-Saxon and the Southern 
temperaments? We are chary with our ap- 
plause and our expressions of disapproval. 
Southern audiences are to-day, and were in 
Terence's time, as unrestrained in their out- 
bursts of disapproval as they are quick in ex- 
pressing their admiration of a play. The popu- 
larity of Plautus admits of no question. It 
could be shown from the confident tone of his 
prologues if it were not attested by the vogue 
which his plays had long after his death. A 
still more convincing proof that the comedies 
of Plautus and his successors appealed to the 
popular taste lies in the fact that the Roman 
officials, in arranging the great national festi- 
vals in the spring, summer, and autumn, regu- 
larly included dramatic performances in their 
programme. Now, as we know, there was a 
close connection between politics and the 
drama, for most of the Roman festivals were 
under the direction of ambitious young offi- 
cials whose political future depended largely 
on their success in giving entertainments which 
pleased the people. Both the modern and the 
ancient theatrical manager must draw full 
houses — one to make money, the other to 
win votes. If the plays of Plautus and Terence 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 167 

had not pleased the people we may be sure 
these political managers would not have pre- 
sented them. In the early days there were no 
accessories to help a play along, no elaborate 
costumes, little stage setting, and no perma- 
nent seats for the spectators. The success of 
a performance depended solely on the popular 
qualities of the play itself and the skill with 
which it was presented. The Roman drama, 
therefore, reflected in a peculiar way the liter- 
ary taste of the people, and the taste of the 
common people, too, because no charge was 
made for admission, so that ancient theatrical 
audiences, unlike ours, were not composed of 
the well-to-do, but of poor and rich alike. 
How discriminating was the literary judg- 
ment of the Roman populace in the second 
century B. C, the extant plays of Plautus and 
Terence bear witness. Indeed, Lucian Miiller, 
the brilliant German critic, in his defence of 
the Roman audience, goes so far as to suggest 
a comparison of the literary merits of Roman 
comedies and of the plays which are put on the 
stage to-day, much to the disadvantage of the 
modern playwright. It is quite possible that 
a modern Plautus or a modern Terence would 
have some difficulty in finding a manager who 



168 LITERATURE AND THE 

would think it wise to stage his Rudens or his 
Andria. To the discriminating taste of the 
Roman populace must also be attributed the 
high degree of perfection to which the art of 
acting was brought by an Ambivius, a Ros- 
cius, and an iEsopus — a perfection of which 
such fine literary critics as Cicero and Quin- 
tilian speak with admiration. In our discus- 
sion we have confined our attention to comedy, 
partly for the sake of brevity, partly because 
no complete Roman tragedy of the early period 
has come down to us, and partly because 
comedy reflects in a peculiar way the taste of 
the people, but we should arrive at the same 
conclusion from a study of tragedy. Classical 
tragedies were put on the stage until the close 
of the Republic, and had a prominent place in 
the programme at the dramatic festival which 
Pompey gave at the dedication of his great 
theatre in 55 B. C. 

But in the later days of the Republic legiti- 
mate drama was being crowded to the wall by 
the togatay the Atellan farce, and the mime. 
This change seems to indicate a decline of the 
popular taste, but perhaps it points not so 
much to a decline, as to a change in the taste of 
the people, and to the development of a new 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 169 

literary tendency. The comedies of Plautus 
and Terence portrayed Greek life; the scenes 
were laid in Greek cities, the actors wore a 
Greek dress, and the traditions, laws, and 
social practices upon which the plot rested 
were often foreign to Roman experience. The 
Roman wanted to see the life of his own time 
and of his own people represented on the stage. 
This craving found satisfaction in the three 
new forms of the drama which have just been 
mentioned. All of them dealt with the every- 
day life of the Italian people. In the mime, 
which proved to be the most popular of the 
three, this tendency toward realism found ex- 
pression not only in the subjects which the 
playwright chose and in his method of pre- 
senting them, but in the great numbers of 
popular aphorisms which such writers as Pub- 
lilius Syrus introduced into their plays, in at- 
tacks on contemporary politicians like those 
which Laberius made, in the giving up of 
masks and buskins, in the assignment of fem- 
inine roles to women, and in the use of elab- 
orate stage settings. The mime and the farce 
stood on a lower moral plane than comedy; 
but in their best literary form, as they came 
from the pen of a Laberius or a Publilius, 



170 LITERATURE AND THE 

they reached a high degree of development. 
In other words, the movement was away from 
idealism and toward realism. It is interesting, 
however, to note this fact in passing: that the 
interval of one hundred years which lies be- 
tween the middle of the second and the first 
centuries before Christ is the period of politi- 
cal and social revolution ; and that the triumph 
of realism over idealism, of the mime, who 
represents the masses in literature, over the 
tragic and comic actor coincides with the over- 
throw of the aristocracy by the democracy in 
the political world. 

We have sought to estimate the literary taste 
of republican Rome by studying briefly the 
character of its drama. For the Romans under 
the Empire we shall try to find another test, 
but before doing so it may be interesting to sup- 
plement the evidence we have just found by 
asking ourselves with what Latin classics, out- 
side of the drama, the Romans of the Republic 
and of the early Empire were most familiar. 
If Macaulay's New Zealander a thousand 
years hence can find out the English authors 
specified for admission to Princeton and to the 
other principal colleges of the Middle and 
New England States, he may not discover our 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 171 

favorite authors, but he will know those with 
whom we have some acquaintance. Similarly, 
if we know the school texts which the rising 
generation in republican Rome used, we shall 
know something of its literary range. Fortu- 
nately we can answer that question with some 
success. Roman literature begins with a school- 
book. The inspiration which impelled Livius 
Andronicus to translate the Odyssey came not 
from the Muses, but from his need of a text to 
use in teaching Latin to boys, and in reading 
the few extant lines of his work some of us may 
feel that they reveal the stiffness of the school- 
master rather than the grace of the poet. Still 
Livius Andronicus deserves our sympathy and 
a certain measure of admiration even, for the 
Latin language in the middle of the third cen- 
tury before Christ was a rough instrument to 
use for literary purposes, and I am afraid we 
have the music of Homer's lines ringing too 
clearly in our ears to estimate the literary mer- 
its of his translator with fairness. But this 
Latin Odyssey was written for use in the 
schools, and that purpose it served faithfully, 
if not well, for two hundred years. Horace 
was brought up on it by "Orbilius of the 
rods," and his prejudiced estimate of early 



172 LITERATURE AND THE 

Latin writers, even of Plautus, may be due in 
part to his trying experience with Andronicus 
and Orbilius. 

Even the prosaic verses of Livius Androni- 
cus seem almost touched with the divine affla- 
tus when they are compared with the second 
text-book of whose use we hear. In his essay 
On the Laws, Cicero calls to his brother's 
mind the fact that they had both learned the 
Laws of the Twelve Tables in boyhood. It is 
needless to recall how unutterably barren these 
laws are, how harsh and crude, and how lack- 
ing they are even in broad legal principles. 
At all events, Roman boys and girls were not 
brought up on literary dainties. By the side 
of Livius Andronicus in the schools stood the 
national epics of Nsevius and Ennius, to be sup- 
planted in later years by the iEneid. Horace, 
too, in verification of his tragicomic apostrophe 
to his little book of Epistles as he sends it out 
into the world, fell into the hands of the village 
teacher, and in course of time Ovid and even 
Lucan and Statins underwent the same experi- 
ence. No school-book, however, attained the 
vogue of the iEneid. On the walls of Pompeii, 
at the height of a school-boy's hand, one can 
read to-day rudely scratched copies of Arma 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 173 

virumque and Italiam fato. The other poets 
who are honored in the same place, but in less 
degree, are Lucretius, Ovid, Propertius, and 
Tibullus. The three last-mentioned authors 
probably enjoy a prominence on the walls 
somewhat out of proportion to their general 
popularity, because the quotations or adapta- 
tions of their verses which we find there seem 
to be made by lovers, who would come on 
more suitable sentiments in their writings than 
they would elsewhere. It is a noticeable thing 
that the favorite text-books were in verse. Of 
the prose writers only Sallust and Livy seem 
to have been used in the schools. Cicero, con- 
trary to his own expectations as expressed in 
one of his speeches, was little read there. To 
make reasonably complete our list of the 
authors widely kno^vTi we must add to these 
school-books the plays of Plautus, Caecilius, 
Terence, Afranius, Publilius, Laberius, En- 
nius, Pacuvius, and Accius, with which the 
Romans, under the Republic at least, became 
acquainted in the theatre. Probably Roman 
schools would not be so important a factor in 
spreading a knowledge of literature as schools 
are in this country. The Romans of course 
knew nothing of compulsory education, and 



174 LITERATURE AND THE 

they had no organized system of state-sup- 
ported schools; but even under the Republic 
the fees which private school teachers charged 
were so pitiably small that it must have been 
possible for children of the middle classes to 
get an elementary education. There is very 
fair evidence, too, from Pompeii and from 
what we know of certain arrangements made 
in the army that the average citizen could 
read and write. The election posters which 
we find on the walls of Pompeii, the trades- 
men's signs, the announcements of articles lost 
and found, as well as the large number of jests 
and passing thoughts scratched on the stucco 
by loungers do not necessarily imply that the 
Pompeian was master of the art of reading to 
such an extent that he would enjoy an epic or 
a lyric poem, but they at least point to the 
conclusion that he could read. This state of 
literacy under the Empire need not surprise us 
when we recall the support which was given 
by many emperors to higher institutions of 
learning, and by many private citizens out- 
side Rome to the elementary schools of their 
native towns. Pliny's generosity in helping 
to endow a school at Comum was not an iso- 
lated occurrence, as the benefactions recorded 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 175 

on the tombstones qf generous citizens in vari- 
ous parts of the Empire abundantly testify. 
But could books be had by the average citizen ? 
We think of the cheap book and the public 
library as blessings coming direct from the 
invention of the printing-press, and at first 
thought we may be inclined to suppose that in 
Rome, when copies had to be written by hand, 
books must have been as dear as they were 
during the Middle Ages when Bibles were 
chained to the desk. But of course we know 
that this was not the case. Copyists had been 
trained to attain such a speed in writing, and 
slave labor was so cheap, that in the first cen- 
tury of our era, as Martial tells us, the first 
book of his poems, which contains about seven 
hundred lines, could be had at a sum amount- 
ing to thirty or forty cents, while his Xenia 
could be sold for twenty cents. At these rates, 
books did not cost more than twice what they 
do to-day. But the people did not have to 
rely upon buying books. The fashion of 
founding public libraries, which was insti- 
tuted by Pollio in the reign of Augustus, was 
taken up by other rich philanthropists in later 
days, so that by Hadrian's time there were no 
less than twenty-nine in Rome itself, to say 



176 LITERATURE AND THE 

nothing of collections of books in the public 
baths, and the practice adopted at the capital 
was probably followed in every considerable 
town throughout the Empire. This great 
chain of public libraries cannot have been in- 
tended to supply the needs of literary men or 
even of the well-to-do. It presupposes a very 
large reading public. Our conclusion there- 
fore is for the Empire, as it was for the Repub- 
lic, that the average Roman must have had a 
very fair acquaintance with his national liter- 
ature, no longer through the medium of the 
stage, as had been the case in early days, but 
through attendance at the schools, through 
the multiplication of books at low prices, and 
through the establishment of public libraries. 
In spite of all this evidence, I can imagine 
that doubt may still linger in some minds when 
the cruel amusements of the Roman people are 
recalled. Could a people who took such de- 
light in gladiatorial contests find any pleasure 
in literature.? Are brutal instincts and an 
aesthetic taste ever found together ? I think in 
this connection we ought to remember the re- 
ligious origin of the gladiatorial contests; we 
ought to remember that the people who took 
such a passionate delight in them had been 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 177 

accustomed to see them and to hear of them 
from infancy on, and came to regard them as 
the Spaniard looks at the bull-fight. We need 
only recall some of the great Renaissance pa- 
trons of art and literature to recognize the fact 
that cruelty and a capacity for aesthetic enjoy- 
ment may easily be found in the same character. 
It occurred to me that we might learn some- 
thing of the acquaintance which the common 
people had with literature by noticing the 
classical stories which are referred to in pop- 
ular Latin literature. With that idea in mind 
I looked through some of the works of those 
authors who wrote for the masses or described 
their condition. The results were interest- 
ing, but out of the material I shall only venture 
to bring together a very few points from Plau- 
tus and Petronius, one a writer of the Repub- 
lic, the other of the Empire. The evidence 
must be used with caution. The comedies of 
Plautus were adapted from the lost originals 
of Menander and Diphilus and Philemon, of 
course, so that we can rarely be certain 
whether a passage comes from the pen of 
Menander or Plautus. But Plautus treats his 
originals with considerable freedom, it will be 
remembered. He yields so far to his Roman 



178 LITERATURE AND THE 

audiences, for instance, as to insert references 
to contemporary men and things in the Greek 
setting of his plays. May we not, therefore, 
assume with probabiHty that, in adapting the 
plays of Menander and Philemon for pres- 
entation to his countrymen, he would ex- 
punge from the lines of the Greek playwright 
those references to classical stories which 
would be unintelligible to his audience ? This 
procedure would be much less violent than the 
opposite practice. It would not be destructive 
of the illusion, as mentioning contemporary 
events was, and the excision of such learned 
matter would be easy because it is generally 
introduced in metaphorical passages. At all 
events, let me mention a few of the classical 
myths which figure in tragic or epic poetry and 
are used by Plautus. We find Jason there, 
Bellerophon, Thetis, Ganymede, Phaon with 
whom Sappho fell in love, Philomela and the 
swallows, and, treated at some length, the 
stories of Hercules and of the Trojan War. I 
shall have to content myself with quoting a bit 
from a passage on the Trojan War. It will be 
remembered how frequently the slave in com- 
edy, in plotting to get money from the old 
man, compares his enterprise to the storming 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 179 

of a city. That is the parallel which the slave 
Chrysalus has in mind in the Bacchides (v. 
945 jf.), when he compares the soldier of the 
play to Menelaus, the young man Mnesilochus 
to Paris, the courtesan to Helen, and boast- 
fully says: *'To our stupid old man here, to 
him, I say, I give the name of Ilium. The 
soldier is Menelaus; I am Agamemnon, 
Ulysses, too, the son of Laertes ; Mnesilochus 
is Alexander, who shall bring ruin to his home. 
He has carried off Helen, in whose behalf I am 
now laying siege to Ilium. Now I have heard 
in that very connection that Ulysses was, as I 
am, both bold and unscrupulous," and so he 
runs on for thirty lines until his soliloquy is 
interrupted by the sudden appearance on the 
stage of the old man who in the slave's exalted 
state of mind is Priam, the personification of 
Troy. If the average Roman citizen had not 
been familiar with the story of Troy it seems 
hardly probable that Plautus would have al- 
lowed this passage to stand in his play. 

Petronius wrote his witty, cynical novel for 
his friends at the imperial court, but it is a 
picture of low life and in that respect is not 
uninstructive in this connection, for, at a din- 
ner which the hero Encolpius attends, his host, 



180 LITERATURE AND THE 

Trimalchio, a rich freedman, when somewhat 
in his cups, discourses upon several literary 
subjects and gives us his version of various 
classical myths. Among other topics he essays 
a comparison of Cicero and Publilius Syrus 
the mime. He tells his guests, too, that he 
has read Homer as a boy, and in illustration 
of his acquaintance with the poet recounts the 
origin of Corinthian bronze. It seems, accord- 
ing to Trimalchio, that "when Troy was cap- 
tured, Hannibal, a sly fellow and a great 
rogue, heaped all the statues of bronze, of 
gold, and of silver into one pile and set fire to 
it; they were melted into one heterogeneous 
mass of bronze." He praises highly a bas- 
relief he has of Medea which shows, as he 
says, "how Cassandra kills her sons." The 
company at dinner is entertained by actors 
who present scenes from the Iliad, and Tri- 
malchio gives a brief outline of the epic narra- 
tive, which in his version runs as follows : " Dio- 
medes and Ganymede were two brothers. 
Their sister was Helen. Agamemnon carried 
her oflF. So now Homer tells how the Trojans 
and Parentini fight with each other. He won, 
of course, and gave his daughter Iphigenia in 
marriage to Achilles. That's the reason Ajax 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 181 

went mad." This doesn't speak well for the 
average man's acquaintance with classical 
myths, but perhaps Petronius has used his 
colors a little too freely in painting Trimalchio, 
and perhaps a present-day parvenu might not 
acquit himself better if he were asked to tell the 
story of King Arthur and the Round Table or 
relate the plot of Paradise Lost. We have 
spoken of libraries in the earlier part of this 
paper. Apparently the possession of books 
by a parvenu did not imply then, any more 
than it does now, the reading of them, for Tri- 
malchio, as he tells us, had two libraries, one 
of Greek books, and one of Latin. The cath- 
olicity of his taste is illustrated by the fact that 
side by side on his walls were shown scenes 
from the Iliad and Odyssey and local gladia- 
torial contests. 

And this brings us to the wall paintings at 
Pompeii. A large number of them deal with 
mythological subjects. We see among many 
others Priam turning back toward Troy with 
the ransomed body of Hector, Perseus and An- 
dromeda looking at a reflection of the head of 
Medusa in a pool, Aphrodite caring for the 
wounded Adonis, Thetis in the workshop of 
Hephaestus, the young Hercules strangling the 



182 LITERATURE AND THE 

serpents, the fall of Icarus, and the sacrifice 
of Iphigenia. If only a few well-known clas- 
sical incidents were depicted, we might sup- 
pose that they were traditional or conven- 
tional subjects whose appearance on the 
house walls would not necessarily imply the 
acquaintance of the householder or the artist 
with the underlying story; but their number 
and variety is really very great, as I have tried 
to show in the illustrations mentioned, and so 
many precise situations are portrayed that we 
must assume a rather intimate acquaintance 
with the legends involved on the part of the 
average Pompeian, and Pompeii is more in- 
structive for us in this matter than Hercula- 
neum would be, because it reflects the average 
culture of a prosperous Italian town. 

While the Pompeian wall paintings point to 
an acquaintance with the subject-matter of 
epic poetry and tragedy on the part of the 
people, other evidence leads us to the conclu- 
sion that they were more or less familiar with 
the lines of some of the classical poets, or at 
least with popular sentiments from their 
works. An interesting study of the Roman 
metrical epitaphs was made a year or two ago 
by a German scholar for the purpose of find- 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 183 

ing out what the amateur authors of them 
borrowed from the classical poets. In them 
there were found some five hundred quotations 
or reminiscences from Latin authors. Virgil 
is here again the favorite poet, with Ovid and 
Lucan next in order. There is very Httle from 
Horace, now and then a reminiscence of Mar- 
tial, Lucretius, Propertius, Tibullus, and Sta- 
tins. However, in this case, as in discussing 
the quotations found on the walls of Pompeii, 
we ought to bear the fact in mind that a pref- 
erence would naturally be shown for the poet 
whose sentiments would be most appropriate 
for the purpose in hand, and Horace wrote 
little that would be suitable for a tombstone. 

These metrical inscriptions enable us to 
appreciate the taste of the Romans for litera- 
ture on another and a more positive side. 
They, and the folk tales, constitute the liter- 
ature which the common people have left us. 
Most of these poems are epitaphs. They 
were engraved upon stones placed along the 
highways which radiated from the great cities, 
and many of them were addressed to the pass- 
er-by. They come, then, from the average man 
and are intended for his eye. Almost two 
thousand of them have been preserved to us. 



184 LITERATURE AND THE 

and they run from the third century before 
Christ to the sixth century of our era. They 
present in an epitome the social history of 
Rome. At first we see only the native ItaHan 
stock represented in the names which they 
contain. Then gradually Greeks, Syrians, 
Celts, and all the other peoples whom Rome 
subdued. At first only distinguished men were 
honored in this way, but as the oligarchy gives 
way to democracy, the memory of all classes 
is perpetuated in verse, — nobles, commons, 
freedmen, and slaves. At first the stones record 
only noteworthy achievements in the field and 
in the forum ; then come the virtues of private 
life, as the individualistic spirit makes itself 
felt. The development of industrial life is re- 
flected in the epitaphs of workers in bronze, 
gold, and silver, of ship carpenters, and por- 
ters, of merchants, actors, and dancers. The 
simple faith of the early days gives way to the 
scepticism of the later Republic, to the Orien- 
tal cults of the Empire, and finally to Chris- 
tianity. They take a tone of bravado, of res- 
ignation, of hope, or of doubt. They express 
a hope in a future life or they tell us that death 
ends all. Some of them warn us to be upright 
and virtuous, others to make the pursuit of 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 185 

pleasure the object of our lives. Had I a facile 
pen I should try to render a few of them into 
English verse, but I shall have to content 
myself with turning three or four of them into 
plain prose. A trader at Brundisium leaves this 
record of his life: "If it irks thee not, stranger, 
stop and read. On winged ships have I often 
hurried o'er the mighty deep; many lands 
have I visited; this is the end of my journey- 
ing which long ago, at my birth hour, the 
Parcse foretold. Here have I left behind me 
all my cares and all my labors. Here I fear 
neither the heavens, nor the storm clouds, nor 
the savage sea. Here I fear not lest loss may 
overtop my gain. Kindly Faith, to thee I give 
my thanks, goddess most holy; thrice when 
fortune was broken and I in despair hast thou 
restored my fortune. Thou dost deserve that 
all men should yearn after thee. Stranger, 
mayst thou live, and fare thee well; may fate 
always bring thee gain since thou hast not 
scorned this stone." 

Perhaps literature has not left us a truer 
picture of the Roman matron than has this 
stone from the Appian Way: ** Stranger, what 
1 have to say is quickly told ; stop and read it 
to the end. Here is the unbeautiful tomb of 



186 LITERATURE AND THE 

a beautiful woman. Claudia was the name 
her parents gave her. Her husband she loved 
with her whole heart. Two sons she bore; of 
them the one she leaves on earth, the other she 
buried beneath the sod. Charming in dis- 
course, gentle in mien, she kept the house, she 
made the wool. I have finished. Go thy 
way." A husband in his tribute to his wife 
writes: "Florentina, my sweet, sweet wife, 
sovereign mistress of my heart, modesty and 
purity and a loyalty which kept inviolate the 
marriage couch have made thee dear to thy 
husband. To the pursuit of arms have I been 
free to go with mind serene, and my household 
hath prospered under thy protecting care. 
Now thy desolate sons seek the comfort which 
thou didst give, and the house in sadness 
grieves when thou dost die." Near the town 
of Pisaurum was found the epitaph of a slave 
boy composed by his patron, who was also his 
father: *' Traveller, thou who dost walk along 
the way with footstep firm, stop, I pray thee, 
and I beg thee, scorn not my epitaph. Twice 
six years and two months have I passed in the 
world above, tenderly cherished and loved. 
I have learned the doctrines of Pythagoras 
and the teachings of the wise, and I have read 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 187 

books ; I have read the divine verses of Homer 
and the many rules of Euclid for the abacus. 
I had my pleasures, too, and boyish sports. 
(The honor of freedom) my father, who was 
my patron, would have granted to me, had I 
not unhappily suffered an adverse fate. But 
now a resting-place below — to the stream of 
Acheron, through the murky stars of bottom- 
less Tartarus I go. I have escaped life with its 
unrest. Hope, beauty, farewell. With you 
I have no lot. Lead others on with your en- 
ticements, pray. This is my eternal home. 
Here have I been placed. Here shall I always 
be.'' 

Four of the metrical epitaphs reveal to us 
a pleasing and unexpected side of Roman 
character. They are epitaphs on pet dogs. 
One was a great white hunting dog named 
Margarita who coursed through the trackless 
forests, as she tells us on her tombstone. 
Another "never barked without reason, but 
now he is silent." Myia, the little Gallic dog, 
barked fiercely if she found a rival lying in her 
mistress's lap. The stone of Patricus, an 
Italian dog, at Salernum contains this tribute 
from his mistress: "My eyes were wet with 
tears, our dear little dog, when I bore thee (to 



188 LITERATURE AND THE 

the grave), a service which I should have ren- 
dered thee with less grief three lustrums ago. 
So, Patricus, never again shalt thou give me 
a thousand kisses. Never again canst thou 
lie contentedly in my lap. In sadness have 
I buried thee, as thou deservest, in a resting- 
place of marble, and I have put thee for all 
time by the side of my shade. In thy qualities, 
sagacious thou wert like a human being. Ah 
me! what a loved companion have we lost! 
Thou, sweet Patricus, wert wont to come to 
our table, and in my lap to ask for bits in thy 
flattering way. It was thy way to lick with 
eager tongue the dish which oft my hands held 
up to thee, the whilst thy tail didst show thy 
joy." These translations reproduce very in- 
adequately the sincerity, the delicacy of senti- 
ment, the simple pictures of life, and the 
gracefully turned expressions which charac- 
terize some of these little poems. The con- 
struction of the verse they do not show at all. 
These half-dozen specimens of sepulchral 
verse are, of course, above the average of the 
great majority of metrical epitaphs. Many of 
the others are awkward, commonplace, and 
full of stock expressions, but those which have 
been given constitute only a small part of the 



COMMON PEOPLE OF ROME 189 

really admirable bits of poetry to be found on 
tombstones and in dedicatory inscriptions. 
Now if we compare them with the obituary 
poetry and the sepulchral verse which the 
amateur poet of to-day writes, shall we not be 
inclined to reach the same conclusion concern- 
ing the comparative creative power of the 
Romans and ourselves which we reached v/ith 
reference to their literary taste when compared 
with ours? 

We set out with the purpose of finding out 
something about the literary taste of the com- 
mon people of Rome and their acquaintance 
with literature, to see if the low esteem in 
which they are held in these matters is justified. 
We found in the drama a peculiarly satisfac- 
tory test of the literary appreciation of the 
Romans under the Republic, because plays 
were written for the masses, and we found that 
a higher standard was attained in these plays 
than is reached by the average play to-day. 
Under the Empire a knowledge of classical 
literature was spread in the schools which 
brought an elementary education within the 
reach of almost every one, and an acquaintance 
with good books was made possible through 
the production of cheap books and the estab- 



190 LITERATURE 

lishment of many public libraries. We are not 
surprised, therefore, to find that the writings 
of popular authors and the Pompeian fres- 
cos presuppose some acquaintance on the 
part of the common people with the great 
classical myths and legends, and that the 
graffiti on the walls of Pompeii and the remi- 
niscences of classical poets in the metrical epi- 
taphs disclose a familiarity with many of the 
verses of popular authors. Finally, unnamed 
amateur poets have shown a creative power 
in the metrical epitaphs which goes far to con- 
firm the favorable opinion which we have al- 
ready been led to form by the other evidence 
of the appreciation which the common people 
of Rome had for literature and of their ac- 
quaintance with it. 



THE CAREER OF A ROMAN STUDENT 

IT is a remarkable fact that in the hot chase 
which historians for centuries have made 
after the minutest events of Cicero's life, 
the son, whose career might at least serve as 
a foil for the father's, has found no biographer. 
Yet it is quite possible to sketch the young 
man's career in some detail. In fact such a 
sketch takes an almost autobiographical form, 
since a large part of our information is drawn 
from the letters of young Cicero himself. From 
these letters and from those of his father, we 
get such a distinct impression of the young 
man's personality as few other characters of 
antiquity give us; while the escapades of the 
young Roman student, his promises of reform, 
and his pleas for more money, present, in out- 
line, the true predecessor of the student of 
to-day. 

Toward the close of the year 65 B. C, in 
a letter to his friend Atticus, the orator an- 
nounces the birth of his son, the health of the 
mother, and the election of the new consuls in 

191 



192 THE CAREER OF 

a single line, and after this curt announcement, 
turns to the news of the day. In addition to 
this strange grouping of items this letter is 
noteworthy also in introducing to us, perhaps 
for the first time, another prominent figure in 
Cicero's life, in the person of our old friend 
Catiline. The letter in question is, in fact, 
written to inform Atticus of Cicero's intention 
to undertake the defence of Catiline, and de- 
scribes the rather questionable preparations 
which he and the other attorneys for the de- 
fence were making, while the son's birth 
receives but incidental mention. The circum- 
stances attending the appearance of our hero 
upon the stage were, therefore, scarcely aus- 
picious. In conformity with Roman custom, 
the boy received his father's name, Marcus 
Cicero. 

An attractive boy, if we may accept the 
father's statement to his brother Quintus, 
"a son most lovable and dear to me," and pre- 
cocious ; for one thing which distressed Cicero 
when he was sent into exile a few years later 
was the knowledge that his son, although a 
boy of but seven, fully appreciated the dis- 
grace and trouble which had come upon his 
father. His most intimate friend was his 



A ROMAN STUDENT 198 

cousin Quintus. The two cousins, of almost 
the same age and of similar tastes, were 
brought up, in fact, as brothers; so that Cicero 
writes to Quintus the elder: "Your boy, who 
is the very image of you, my Cicero loves like 
a brother, and respects like an elder brother." 
The harmony which lasted to the end between 
the orator and his brother, interrupted per- 
haps but once, and then but for a moment, in 
the midst of political broils and civil wars 
which set father against son and husband 
against wife, was transmitted from father to 
son. This harmony was, in fact, considered 
of so much importance by the two brothers 
that not only were the boys brought up under 
the same instructors and in the same house- 
hold, but even when the younger Marcus in 
later years urged his father to allow him to 
join Csesar's army in Spain, Cicero was pre- 
vented from granting his request by the fear 
lest the favor which young Quintus had won 
with Caesar might beget jealousy and ill-feeling 
between the two cousins. 

Even amid the claims which politics and law 
made upon him, Cicero found time to take an 
active part in the education of his son, for, as 
he tells us in a letter to his brother: "I am 



194 THE CAREER OF 

writing this letter on the eighth day before the 
Kalends of November, the day of the games, 
while on my way to my villa at Tusculum, and 
I am taking young Cicero along with me to 
give him a taste of his books rather than of the 
circus"; and it may not have been a mere 
chance that the date of Cicero's departure 
from Rome coincided exactly with the date of 
the public games. The boy of eleven, like the 
young man of twenty, found more to satisfy 
his taste in the circus than in his father's study. 
At all events, the prudent father thought the 
atmosphere of Tusculum more suited to work 
than that of Rome. 

Cicero's pamphlet of a few years later, De 
Partitione Oratoria, which is thrown into the 
form of a dialogue between him and his son, 
may well represent in an idealized form the in- 
tercourse between father and son upon these 
visits to Tusculum. Later events lead us to 
question very much the interest which the 
young man took in these philosophical dis- 
cussions. As the two boys grew up, finding 
the personal attention which they required at 
his hands more than public matters would 
allow him to give, Cicero secured a private 
tutor for them in 56 B. C, and, probably fol- 



A ROMAN STUDENT 195 

lowing both his own judgment in the matter 
and the practice of his day, chose for that oflBce 
a Greek named Tyrannio. The choice seems 
not to have been thoroughly satisfactory. At 
all events, in the summer of 54 B. C, to his 
great satisfaction, Cicero secured as their in- 
structor Dionysius, a freedman of Atticus. 
The remarks which Cicero makes so frequently 
in his letters to Atticus upon the accomplish- 
ments of Dionysius afford a fairly good por- 
trait of the man. Two thousand years have 
brought about little change in the lot of the 
private tutor. He was obliged to be then, as he 
must be now, a model of propriety, an ency- 
clopaedia of knowledge, and the willing slave of 
youthful whims. What the poor tutor suf- 
fered with his two rebellious pupils only those 
can picture whose lot has been a similar one. 
From 54 to the close of the year 50 B. C. Dio- 
nysius is mentioned as the constant compan- 
ion and instructor of the boys. Even when 
Cicero was assigned to the proconsulship of 
Cilicia in 51 B. C, and took Marcus and 
Quintus with him, Dionysius went also, and 
carried on the education of the two boys 
mainly at the court of Deiotarus, while Cicero 
was engaged with the affairs of administration 



196 THE CAREER OF 

elsewhere. A Roman boy received the greater 
part of his education from his twelfth to his 
sixteenth year, and these were the years which 
young Marcus passed under the care of Dio- 
nysius. The two favorite text-books in Latin 
in Cicero's day were the Laws of the Twelve 
Tables for prose, and for poetry the transla- 
tion of the Odyssey by Livius Andronicus. 
The bald style and dry contents of the one 
and the wooden character of the other, may 
well excite our sympathy for the young man 
in his struggles with his mother tongue. 
Cicero would scarcely allow his son to slight 
his study of the Twelve Tables, which, he tells 
us in the De Legibus II, 9, he learned by heart 
in his boyhood, because he hoped that young 
Marcus might follow in his footsteps as a law- 
yer. So far as Greek was concerned, Cicero 
had been warned in his youth by experienced 
friends that a liberal education must include 
a thorough knowledge of it. We may be sure, 
therefore, that he took pains to lay emphasis 
upon that side of his son's instruction, and 
the young man must have mastered the lan- 
guage, for, some years later, as we shall pres- 
ently see, we find him living in Greece and 
attending lectures given in Greek. 



A ROMAN STUDENT 197 

The ominous silence which Cicero main- 
tains during these four years concerning the 
Kterary progress of the son, upon whom he 
based such fond hopes, is in striking contrast 
to the freedom with which he chats with his 
friend Atticus upon all other matters, personal 
and political — a silence which is broken by 
only one utterance of any significance, and 
that occurs in a letter from Laodicea, which 
bears the date of February, 50 B. C, when 
young Marcus was fifteen years of age. In 
writing of the progress of the two boys Cicero 
says: "They are fond of each other, they 
study together and take their exercise together ; 
but one of them, like Isocrates in Ephorus and 
Theopompus, needs the curb; the other, the 
spur." Although Cicero did not at the time 
reveal to us which one of the two required the 
spur and which one the curb, the future was 
to do it. A passage in the same letter shows 
us that the boys began to chafe under the rule 
of the schoolmaster; and it is not strange, on 
the other hand, that the temper of even the 
philosophic Dionysius should have given way 
now and then under the strain, so that, as 
Cicero writes, "the boys say he is awfully 
cross," a phrase whose pathetic extravagance 



198 THE CAREER OF 

vouches for the fact that it comes from the 
lips of the boys themselves. 

In Laodicea young Quintus assumed the 
ioga virilis and with it, doubtless, a distaste 
for further academic pursuits. To lose the 
better pupil of the two was too much for the 
patience of Dionysius, and upon reaching 
Italian soil he left Cicero to go back to the 
service of Atticus. Cicero's efforts to induce 
him to return to his charge were of no avail, 
and in the end the father fell into such a bad 
temper over the matter, that of the man whom 
he had before styled *'not merely a learned 
man but also a very conscientious one, who is 
desirous of my approval, and is upright, and, 
not to praise a freedman, a man in the best 
sense of the word," he writes, "by my soul, 
you would think I was asking a Dicaearchus or 
an Aristoxenus to return, and not a person who 
is the worst chatterbox in the world without 
any aptitude for teaching." In accordance 
with Roman practice, young Marcus might 
hope with the assumption of the toga pura 
upon March seventeenth in 49, to turn his 
back forever upon philosophy and law, and 
devote himself to the profession of arms, 
toward which his tastes had long led him. 



A ROMAN STUDENT 199 

The moment was certainly an auspicious 
one for a young man of good family with mili- 
tary aspirations. Upon this very seventeenth 
of March, Pompey, driven from Italian soil by 
the vigor of Caesar's movements, had landed 
at Dyrrachium in Greece, and either leader 
was more than willing in face of the coming 
struggle to accept the help of any young man 
of promise. Young Marcus, who cared little 
for political considerations, would have pre- 
ferred to fight by the side of the young and 
active Caesar rather than with the older and 
over-cautious Pompey, while his father's prac- 
tical neutrality during the civil war makes it 
quite probable that he would have kept his 
son in the same attitude which he himself 
took, had he been able. The compromise be- 
tween father and son upon this point resulted 
in the young man's enlistment under the 
banner of Pompey, where, as commander of 
a squadron of cavalry, he won golden opin- 
ions from both general and army by his skill 
in riding, throwing the lance, and by his pow- 
ers of endurance. But in the very passage in 
which Cicero refers with pride to his son's 
success in arms, when he adds, "successes 
which we win by the use of our intellect and 



200 THE CAREER OF 

reasoning power are more gratifying than 
those which come from physical excellence," 
it is easy to see that the father's ambition 
would not be satisfied by military achieve- 
ments, no matter how brilliant they might be. 
He could not give up the hope that his son 
should seek his fortune at home rather than in 
the field. The battle of Pharsalus in 48 
B. C. put an end to the military hopes of 
young Marcus, who returned once more to 
Italy and waited with his father to see what 
turn events would take. 

The coldness which had sprung up between 
his father and mother led, some time during 
the year 46, to their divorce, and Cicero's 
marriage to his young ward, Publilia, soon 
followed — a turn of affairs which seems to 
have been unbearable to the son. Young 
Marcus, therefore, presented to his father the 
choice between two alternatives, either that 
he should be established in a house of his own 
at Rome or should be allowed to join Csesar in 
Spain. Cicero in writing to Atticus quotes 
the young man's words: "He wants to go to 
Spain or to have a liberal allowance;" and 
the laconic way in which the youth of nineteen 
puts the matter indicates plainly his determi- 



A ROMAN STUDENT 201 

nation to start out in the world for himself. 
We may imagine how distasteful both of 
these propositions were to Cicero: either that 
his only son should publicly cut loose from 
him and set up an establishment of his own, 
or that he should follow the standard of Caesar, 
who had overthrown Cicero's political party 
and exterminated its leaders, who had exalted 
his enemies, the ''improbiy" and wrecked his 
political influence. He decided at last that the 
latter was the lesser evil of the two and con- 
sented to his son's departure for Spain, while 
evidently casting about for some escape from 
this unpleasant arrangement. The aedileship 
of Arpinum offered such an escape. It will 
be remembered that Arpinum was Cicero's 
native town, and the pride which the Arpi- 
nates took in their illustrious townsman knew 
no bounds, so that the candidacy of young 
Marcus doubtless went through with a rush. 
It is unfortunate that Cicero gives us no 
account of the political canvass. The picture 
of the campaign from his pen would be a 
highly interesting one. Young Marcus pos- 
sessed all the qualities of a successful "prac- 
tical politician." He was doubtless a big, 
powerful fellow, noted as we know for his 



202 THE CAREER OF 

athletic accomplishments, devoted to "sport," 
with the reputation of being able to stand 
more strong drink than any man in Italy, a jolly 
companion, and an enemy to the ** kid-gloved" 
aristocracy. Less can be said, perhaps, of his 
qualifications for this office of Commissioner of 
Public Works, but in practical politics this was 
a minor question then as it is now. He could 
at least run well. His colleague in the aedile- 
ship was his cousin Quintus. We may fancy 
that Cicero intended this position to be the first 
step in his son's political career, with the con- 
sulship at Rome for the ultimate goal; but 
the future had in store for him a plan even 
more to his taste, for at the close of his son's 
term of office Cicero's long-cherished hope 
that Marcus might continue his studies, which 
had been broken off by the untimely departure 
of Dionysius, was brought nearer to realization 
by the plan which he announces to Atticus in 
the latter part of the year 46. This plan was 
nothing less than that the young man should 
go to Athens, and complete his education at 
the University there, as the noble scions of so 
many Roman houses were already doing. 

Cicero's daughter, Tullia, died toward the 
end of February, 45 B. C. Her death was the 



A ROMAN STUDENT 203 

culminating point in a long series of mis- 
fortunes which came upon him in rapid suc- 
cession within a period of twelve months — the 
divorce of his wife, Terentia, the separation 
from his second wife, Publilia, his quarrel 
with Quintus, the coldness between himself 
and his son, so that from the depths of his 
despondency he writes in the Tusculan Dis- 
putations: ** Deprived as I am of my political 
honors and of my home life, what hope has the 
future left for me ? Would that I were dead ! " 
It implies, therefore, an immense deal of self- 
sacrifice upon his part that, in the moment of 
his loneliness and despondency, he could not 
only consent to the departure of his son, but 
could even make arrangements for his stay at 
the University. It was only, in fact, a few 
weeks after TuUia's death, when Marcus set 
out for Athens. On his way thither he fell in 
with a fellow student, L. TuUius Montanus, 
and became so warmly attached to him that, 
to gratify his son's generous impulses, Cicero 
paid a debt of twenty-five thousand sesterces 
which stood against young Montanus. The 
lively picture which Capes in his Oxford lec- 
tures gives us of student life in Athens at a later 
day, can hardly represent in all its details the 



204 THE CAREER OF 

state of things in Cicero's time; but, as young 
men have been the same the world over, the 
practices which prevailed in the second and 
third centuries A. D. probably existed, in their 
germ at least, in student circles at Athens at 
the beginning of our era. 

Let us hope, however, that our young Ro- 
man freshman did not meet with so warm a 
reception as was accorded a newcomer in 
later days. Capes quotes from the reminis- 
cences of such an one as follows: "Most of 
the young enthusiasts for learning, noble and 
low-born alike, become mad partisans of their 
professors. As those who have a passionate 
love of racing can hardly contain themselves, 
but copy all the gestures of the jockeys, or bet 
upon the horses entered for the prize although 
they hardly have the wherewithal to live them- 
selves; so the students show their eagerness 
for their teachers and the masters of their 
favorite studies; they are all anxiety to get 
their audience larger, and to have their fees 
increased. And this is carried to portentous 
lengths. They post themselves over the city, 
on the highways, about the harbor, on the tops 
of the hills, nay, in lonely spots ; they win over 
the inhabitants to join their faction. As each 



A ROMAN STUDENT 205 

newcomer disembarks, he falls into their 
hands ; they carry him off at once to the house 
of some countryman or friend who is bent on 
trumpeting the praises of his own professor, 
and by that means gaining his favor or ex- 
emption from his fees." A graphic but pa- 
thetic picture of student life from another point 
of view is quoted in the words of one of the 
professors himself: ''I send my slave out to 
all my scholars to summon them to lecture, 
and he starts off at a run to do my bidding. 
But they are in no mood, like him, to hurry, 
though they ought to be even more in haste. 
They stay, some of them, to sing their songs, 
which we have all heard till we are tired, or 
else they amuse themselves with foolish mer- 
riment and jesting. If their friends or by- 
standers remark on their delay, and at last 
they make their mind up to be off, they talk 
about their sweethearts as they go, or on the 
skill of some dancer at the circus, and they 
gossip even when they get inside, to the annoy- 
ance of real students. This they do until the 
lecture has begun. And even when the sub- 
ject is being discussed, and explanation is 
going on, they keep whispering to each other 
about the jockeys and the races, or some com- 



206 THE CAREER OF 

edians and opera dancers; or about some 
scuffle past or future. Meantime some of 
them stand like statues, with their arms folded 
on each other; others go on blowing their 
noses with both hands; others sit stock still, 
unmoved by any of my strokes of brilliancy or 
wit. Some try to interrupt those who do feel 
stirred. Others vacantly cast up the numbers 
in the room or stare at the trees that grow out- 
side. ... I had a different set of pupils once. 
. . . Each of them used to carry away some- 
thing in his memory of what I said, and then 
they would put their heads together and com- 
pare notes, and write my speech out fair. They 
were quite distressed if they lost any of the 
heads, although that seldom happened. . . . 
But as for you, you can only tell inquirers 
that I have been lecturing, but cannot repeat 
a word of what was said." 

But to return to our hero. Inasmuch as 
Cicero was absent from Rome the greater part 
of the year 45, he authorized Atticus, who had 
trusty correspondents in Athens, to make all 
necessary financial arrangements for his son's 
sojourn abroad. To meet the running ex- 
penses of his university course, Cicero set apart 
the rental from a house upon the Aventine 



A ROMAN STUDENT 207 

and certain shops in the Argiletum. The snug 
sum which resulted therefrom would seem to 
have been sufficient for a student of modest 
tastes, but the tastes of Marcus were evidently 
not of the modest sort, for he pathetically 
writes home in regard to his teacher, Brut- 
tius, "I have hired a place for him near by, 
and I help him out in his poverty so far as I 
can from my own scanty means," and it was 
found necessary to eke out the young man's 
allowance by the payment of additional sums 
now and then, payments which the prudent 
Atticus was less willing to make than Cicero. 
The orator's unwise generosity toward his son 
was occasioned not merely by paternal fond- 
ness, but also by a hope that through a lavish 
expenditure of money his son might make 
himself popular with his fellow students and 
gain access to the more exclusive circles of 
Athenian society, as may be gathered from his 
letter to Atticus at the moment of his son's de- 
parture: "I shall take care that neither Bib- 
ulus nor Acidinus nor Messalla, who I under- 
stand will be at Athens, shall have more money 
to spend than he (Marcus) gets from these rent- 
als." In this hope father and son were dis- 
appointed. The young Bibulus and Messalla 



208 THE CAREER OF 

at Athens frowned upon the social aspirations 
of the younger Marcus, as their fathers at 
Rome had frowned upon those of the elder, 
and the only intimate friends of whom men- 
tion is made are the freedman's son Montanus 
and the renegade rhetorician Gorgias. And 
what was still more unfortunate, the father's 
generosity caused the son's demoralization. 
On sending his son to Athens, Cicero had re- 
quested one of his college instructors, Leonides 
by name, to keep a watchful eye upon the 
young man and now and then to report prog- 
ress to him. Much to the disgust of young 
Marcus, the letters of Leonides were of a very 
frank nature and unfortunately agreed only 
too well with the private advices which Atti- 
cus received of the young man's proceedings. 
Marcus could evidently pass a better judg- 
ment upon a bottle of wine than upon a sys- 
tem of philosophy, and he spent more time in 
the "kneipe" than in the lecture room, al- 
though doubtless Pliny's story is somewhat 
extravagant that young Cicero could swallow 
twelve pints of wine at a draught, and that he 
thus took poetic justice upon Mark Antony, 
his father's future enemy, by robbing him of 
his reputation of being the hardest drinker of 



A ROMAN STUDENT 209 

his time. The boon companion of Marcus 
upon these occasions was his teacher of rhet- 
oric, Gorgias. Cicero was in a high state of 
indignation when the reports of this fact 
reached his ears, and ordered the dismissal of 
the recreant tutor at once. 

This was the condition of things in Decem- 
ber of 44 B. C, when Marcus wrote the letter 
which has been preserved to us by the recipi- 
ent Tiro. The character of the honest f reed- 
man Tiro, and his relations to Cicero, are 
well known. He was Cicero's Boswell, pre- 
serving as priceless treasures the letters and 
even the jests of the orator. It was, therefore, 
a politic stroke on the part of young Marcus 
to address this sheet of good resolutions for 
the future to his father's kind-hearted secre- 
tary and confidant, who would know the right 
time, and the method of approaching his 
father. In a condensed form, the letter would 
read somewhat as follows: "It is a long time, 
I confess, since I have written to you, but I 
have really been waiting for a letter from you, 
which has only just reached me after having 
been forty-six days on the way. The delight 
which both your letter and my father's gave 
me more than repaid me for waiting. I have 



210 THE CAREER OF 

no doubt that the better reports concerning 
me were gratifying to you. I assure you that 
you may become the champion of my reputa- 
tion with a clear conscience. The errors of 
my past conduct cause me so much sorrow, 
that not only do I now shudder at the thought 
of such things, but my very ears burn at the 
mention of them. I have become not merely 
the pupil but the son of Cratippus. I spend 
whole days and nights with him. As for Brut- 
tius I do not let him depart from me. I have, 
in fact, hired apartments for him next door, 
and help him out as far as I can from my 
scanty means (ex meis angustiis). Besides 
that I have lessons in Greek declamation with 
Cassius, and in Latin with Bruttius. My 
most intimate friends are the learned men 
whom Cratippus brought with him from My- 
tilene. I found Gorgias useful for declama- 
tion, but as my father asked me to dismiss 
him, I did so at once. So you have bought a 
farm. I am very glad to hear it. I can imag- 
ine you buying farming tools, and talking 
with the overseer. By the way, I wish you 
would send me a secretary, — a Greek I pre- 
fer; I lose much time in copying lectures. 
Take good care of your health, so that we 



A ROMAN STUDENT 211 

may have literary discussions together by 
and by." 

The epistle is delightfully frank, and politic 
at the same moment — frank in its statements 
of affection for Tiro and of regret for the past, 
politic in its account of that past and its good 
resolutions for the future. It is a student's 
letter "par excellence, with its excuses for neg- 
lect in writing home, its anxiety to appease 
an angry father, its regret for the past, its 
glowing account of work at the present, its 
brilliant literary hopes for the future, its so- 
licitude for the health of the recipient. Even 
a suggestion of financial diflficulties and a hint 
for further advances find a place in it. Change 
the scene from Athens to Princeton or Cam- 
bridge, the date from B. C. to A. D., the name 
to Robinson or Brown, and the student's letter 
of to-day is complete. 

The kind-hearted Tiro would not hesitate 
to accept at their face value the young man's 
protestations, and to plead the writer's cause 
before his master. In fact, a letter to Cicero 
from Trebonius, who visited Marcus at the 
university at this time, vouches for the honesty 
of his resolutions; but this literary activity 
which filled the young man's nights as well as 



212 THE CAREER OF 

days was brought rudely to an end by the news 
which came from Rome in March of 44 B. C. 
Their social sympathies, their courses of study, 
the liberal instincts of youth, with a host of 
other influences, combined to make enthusi- 
astic republicans of the Roman students at 
Athens, and it needed only the tidings of Cae- 
sar's death to convert them into active support- 
ers of the republican cause. The call to arms 
drowned in their ears the milder exhortations 
of philosophy. One of the first to join the 
ranks of Brutus was the young Cicero. Under 
his standard the young man showed the same 
soldierly qualities which had distinguished him 
in the Pompeian War. No more gratifying 
words could reach the ears of Cicero than these 
of Brutus himself: ''Your son Cicero, by his 
activity, his painstaking care, his devotion to 
work, and his broad-mindedness, indeed, by 
the manifestation of every good quality, makes 
such a favorable impression on me that in 
point of fact he never seems to forget whose 
son he is." 

It will always cause regret though not aston- 
ishment to the student of literary history, that 
young Cicero and Horace, although fellow- 
students, were never brought into contact with 



A ROMAN STUDENT 213 

each other at Athens. It would be delightful 
to know the impressions which Horace, the 
hard student, and Marcus, the ne'er-do-well, 
had formed of each other, but we search for 
them in vain. The gulf which lay between 
them in the student world was impassable. 
It is, however, strange — when both, of nearly 
the same age, enlisted at the same place and 
time, and held the same rank under the same 
commander, — that Horace at least does not 
mention his companion in arms. With the 
death of his father in December of 43 B. C, 
our knowledge of young Cicero's movements 
comes nearly to an end. In the pages of Seneca 
and Pliny, the career of our hero serves merely 
to point a moral or to act as a peg upon which 
to hang an historical statement. His political 
harmlessness saved the son from the fate 
which had overtaken the father. There can 
be little doubt that Marcus joined the party of 
Octavianus rather than that of Antony. He 
was in fact the man who brought back to 
Rome the first news of Antony's defeat; and, 
partly in return for his services, but still more 
in repentant recognition of his father's merits, 
Octavianus made Marcus, in the young 
man's thirty-fifth year, his colleague in the 



214 A ROMAN STUDENT 

consulship for the latter part of the year 30 
B. C. It was left for the son to avenge upon 
Mark Antony the death of his father, for it 
was the senate, presided over by the young 
Cicero as consul, which removed the statues 
erected in Antony's honor, took from Antony 
his titles, and declared that none of his de- 
scendants should bear the name of Marcus. 
As Plutarch puts it: "So fate intrusted to the 
household of Cicero the last act in the punish- 
ment of Antony." 

Young Cicero disappears from the stage as 
the proconsul of Asia, and as an epitaph upon 
the careless, jolly Roman student stands the 
stately official inscription lately found at 
Aquinum, and dedicated by the people of that 
town to their patron : 

^M(arco) TuUio M(arci) i{ilio) M(am) n{epoti) 
M {arci) p {ro) n (epoti) Cor (nelia trihu) \ Cic- 
eroni co(n) s{uli) pToco(n)s(uli) prov- 
(incicB) Asise leg(a^o) Imp (era- 
torn) I Cads(aris) Aug(itsti) 
in Syria | patrono. 

» To Marcus Tullius Cicero, of the Cornelian tribe, eon of 
Marcus, grandson of Marcus, great-grandson of Marcus, consul, 
proconsul of the province of Asia, legate of the Emperor Caesar 
Augustus in Syria. To their patron. 



SOME SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 
AND THEIR AUTHORS 

SEVERAL scholars in modern times have 
written chapters on literary forgery, but 
no one seems to have studied in a com- 
prehensive way epigraphical forgery and the 
methods which are employed in detecting it, 
although there is no field of classical study in 
which dishonesty has brought such confusion 
as in epigraphy, and, on the other hand, in no 
investigations have scholars displayed more 
acuteness than they have shown in detecting 
spurious inscriptions. This paper, however, 
does not aim to give a complete survey of the 
subject. Its purpose is merely to bring to- 
gether a sufficient body of facts from the 
notes in the Corpus of Latin Inscriptions and 
from the reports of scholars in the epigraphical 
journals to show the development of the art, 
and to illustrate the methods of some of its 
most famous, or infamous, promoters. 

It was so easy two or three centuries ago to 
compose an important inscription, and to win 

215 



216 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

distinction by publishing it to the world, and 
so diflScult to detect its spurious character, 
that many scholars yielded to the temptation. 
Furthermore, the opportune publication of a 
forged inscription might save a weary search 
in establishing a point, furnish a missing link 
in a chain of evidence, or administer a coup 
de grace to a stubborn opponent. In view of 
this situation we are not surprised to find that 
the number of spurious or suspected inscrip- 
tions mounts up to 10,576 in a total of 144,044, 
corresponding to a ratio of about one spurious 
to thirteen authentic inscriptions. The condi- 
tion of things in the several volumes of the 
Corpus varies greatly. Against vol. VII, with 
only 24 spurious and 1,355 authentic inscrip- 
tions, stand vols. IX and X, which cover the 
old kingdom of Naples, with totals for the 
two volumes of 1,854 * and 14,841, which stand 
to each other in the ratio of one to eight. Since 
each volume of the Corpus contains the inscrip- 



» These numbers represent the inscriptions published up to 
the present time in vols. II-XIV of the Corpus Inscriptionum 
Latinarum. Vol. I is not included because the inscriptions con- 
tained in it are republished elsewhere, and Vol. XV is excluded 
from the calculation because the spurious inscriptions have not 
yet been published for that volume. For our purpose it is also 
unnecessary to take into consideration the published inscriptions 
which have not yet been included in the CIL. 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 217 

tions found in a particular part of the Roman 
world, one covering Spain, for instance, and an- 
other the city of Rome, these differences between 
the several volumes in the matter of forged 
inscriptions, of which the cases just cited are 
characteristic, tempt one to an estimate of the 
comparative honesty of the Spanish, Roman, 
Neapolitan, French, or English epigraphist and 
antiquarian. Two or three independent facts 
also seem to indicate that the national stand- 
ards in this matter among the several Euro- 
pean peoples have not been the same. Thus, 
for instance, Donius, an epigraphist of the 
seventeenth century, fresh from the chagrin 
which his deceitful amanuensis Grata had 
caused him, writes to a friend expressing a de- 
sire for a Belgian to fill the position of secre- 
tary for him ** because Italians as a rule are 
little suited for such a post" (c/. CIL,^ VI, 5, 
p. 228*), and Borghesi was so indignant at the 
large number of forgeries from Naples that he 
was inclined to hold all Neapolitan inscrip- 
tions under suspicion. On the other hand, the 
Englishman may feel some national pride in the 
fact that only twenty-four spurious inscriptions 
are found in the collection from Britain. But 

* The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. 



218 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

conclusions based on national or geographical 
considerations must be drawn with great care, 
for, in point of fact, all the principal continental 
peoples of Europe — the Italians, the Ger- 
mans, the French, and the Spanish — have 
had representatives in the art of forgery, and 
an examination of the spurious inscriptions 
shows that the composition of them is charac- 
ertistic of a particular period rather than of 
a given region. The publication of fictitious 
inscriptions goes back to the fifteenth century 
and was practised as late as the middle of the 
last century, but its Augustan age runs from 
the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the 
seventeenth century. Since Italy furnished the 
most fruitful field for epigraphical study at that 
time, as it does to-day, and since, consequently, 
Italians outnumbered others in cultivating it, 
it is not strange that Italian forgeries are more 
numerous than those from other sources. It 
is also true, as we shall have occasion to no- 
tice, that two or three Italian scholars were 
very prolific in this field and, therefore, have 
brought up the national average. Turning 
from the geographical factor to the time ele- 
ment, perhaps we should not boast too much, 
at the expense of our predecessors, of the 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 219 

higher standard of epigraphical morals which 
prevails now, because the certainty of detec- 
tion exerts a most salutary deterrent influence 
upon those who might be inclined to sin in 
this matter to-day. We have now a systematic 
collection of inscriptions; critical principles 
are well established, and interest in classical 
antiquities is so general and all parts of the 
Roman world are reached to-day with such 
comparative ease, that a forgery, or the attrir 
bution of a forged inscription to a particular 
place, would be readily detected. 

Felix Felicianus of Verona, of the fifteenth 
century, who is perhaps best known for an in- 
teresting little treatise upon the letters of the 
alphabet and the best methods of drawing 
them (c/. R. Schone in Eph. Epigr. I, p. 
255 ff.), may, perhaps, be regarded as the 
father of epigraphical forgery. The art did 
not appear in its completed form at once, and 
the earliest practice of it was comparatively 
naive and harmless. Felicianus and his im- 
mediate successors never, or rarely, forged 
inscriptions outright, but they pretended to 
find in some ruin an inscription mentioned by 
an ancient author, or their fictitious finds were 
based upon some statement found in literature. 



220 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

Thus Michael Ferrarinus reports as one of his 
discoveries the epitaph of the poet Ennius, 
obviously taking the text from Cicero's Tuscu- 
lan Disputations, i, 34, and Mazochius in his 
Epigrammata Antiqua Urbis, published in 
1521, reports the following inscription: Divo 
Gordiano victori Persarum, victori Gothorum, 
victori Sarmatarum, depulsori Romanorum 
seditionum, victori Germanorum, sed non 
victori Philipporum (CIL. VI, 5,1 * S). This 
is, of course, taken bodily from the life of the 
three Gordians (chap. 34) by Julius Capitol- 
inus. The latest-known forgeries are those of 
Chabassiere, a French engineer who in 1866 
published through the Academy of Constan- 
tine several African inscriptions, one of which, 
an inscription of King Hiempsal, was recog- 
nized as a forgery by both Mommsen and 
Wilmanns (c/. CIL. VIII, p. 489), and cast 
discredit upon all the other inscriptions re- 
ported by Chabassiere alone. 

If the Berlin Academy had persisted in fol- 
lowing up the plan, which it had adopted in 
1850 at Zumpt's suggestion, of basing the 
Corpus mainly upon the epigraphical texts 
given in manuscript and printed collections, 
probably most of the spurious inscriptions 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 221 

which have been composed during the four 
centuries which intervene between Felicianus 
and Chabassiere, and which now languish 
under the dreaded star affixed to them by the 
editors of the Corpus, would never have been 
thus stigmatized. Fortunately Mommsen, 
before publishing an inscription, insisted upon 
examining the stone, whenever it was in exist- 
ence, and demonstrated the feasibility of his 
plan and the correctness of his method in his 
Inscriptiones Regni Neapolitani, which ap- 
peared in 1852. Fortunately, too, Mommsen 
had, perhaps unwittingly, selected for this 
first scientific collection a field, viz., the king- 
dom of Naples, where forgers, as we noticed 
above, had been most active. The attention 
of the editors of the Corpus was thus drawn 
at the outset to the importance of detecting 
forged and interpolated inscriptions, and many 
of the critical principles upon which the science 
rests to-day were formulated and applied by 
Mommsen in this preliminary work (c/., e. gr., 
CIL. IX, p. xi) . From this early period comes, 
for instance, the well-known classification of 
all previous collectors in three categories: (1) 
the honest and careful; (2) the dishonest, and 
(3) the negligent, credulous, or ignorant. The 



222 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

principle of classification adopted for the 
second group is Calvinistic in its severity. 
One demonstrated lapse from honesty on the 
part of a collector condemns every inscription 
for which the scholar in question is our only 
direct source of information. To prevent any 
spurious inscription from slipping into our 
collection, the adoption of this principle was 
undoubtedly necessary, but the pessimistic 
view of human nature which it suggests does 
not correspond to our every-day observation 
of life. A man may turn aside from the truth 
once or twice, but may, in the main, follow 
the path of rectitude, and the sweeping char- 
acter of this critical rule is probably respon- 
sible for putting many authentic inscriptions 
in the suspected list, and some cases of this 
sort have already come to light (c/. CIL. VI, 
5, pp. 253 ^-55 *). It would seem desirable 
soon to examine these lists in the several vol- 
umes systematically in the light of new dis- 
coveries and of our increased knowledge, in 
the hope of rescuing authentic inscriptions 
from their present position among the sus- 
pected or condemned. That the principle 
underljdng the second grouping of collectors 
does not lean toward lenity seems to be indi- 



AND THEIR AUTHORS £23 

cated also by the fact that no inscription re- 
garded by the editors of the Corpus as authen- 
tic has been condemned later. 

The most prolific forgers in the period 
from Felicianus to Chabassiere were Boissard, 
Gutenstein, Ligorio, Lupoli, Roselli, and 
Trigueros. The names — French, German, 
Italian, and Spanish — indicate, as observed 
above, that scholars of all the principal conti- 
nental countries were guilty of this oflfence. 
The devious methods of Francisco Roselli are 
especially hard to follow because he at the 
same time forged some inscriptions and copied 
many other authentic ones, but copied them 
carelessly. His collection, which was made 
up partly of inscriptions from Grumentum, 
was published in 1790, and Mommsen, find- 
ing it very diflBcult to make a correct estimate 
of his work from the published collection, 
went to Grumentum in 1846 to study his 
method of procedure. He found that the 
people of Grumentum regarded Roselli as 
their most distinguished citizen, and they gave 
their visitor all the help they could to make 
the fame of their fellow townsman known as 
widely as possible. Mommsen's embarrass- 
ment when he discovered the true character 



2U SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

of Roselli and had to publish the facts is best 
indicated in his own words (CIL. X, p. 28) : 
**I hope that the good people of Grumentum, 
who have helped me in my investigations, and 
whom I cherish in grateful and loving remem- 
brance, may not be angry at me because I 
have spoken frankly about Roselli, and have 
wished to be honest rather than complaisant." 
Among other peculiarities Roselli's MS. shows 
some very interesting afterthoughts. In one 
case (CIL. X, 43 *) he forged an inscription in 
honor of a certain Q. Attius in which the 
people of his native town were characterized 
as Bruttii, but, finding later that they were 
really of Lucanian origin, he revised his in- 
scription by dropping out the line in which 
the Bruttian origin was mentioned. 

Roselli's purpose was apparently to bring 
distinction to himself and his native town. 
Gutenstein's motive was more altruistic. He 
was Gruter's amanuensis and not only re- 
ported authentic inscriptions to his master, 
but also forged others to gratify Gruter's in- 
tense desire for additions to his collection. 
Many of his inscriptions he pretended to have 
found in the collections of Metellus and Sme- 
tius. His dishonesty was discovered when these 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 225 

collections were examined and Gutenstein's 
inscriptions were not found among them (cf, 
CIL. VI, 5, 3226*-3239*; Bormann Eph. 
Epigr. Ill, p. 72). His epigraphical style is 
well illustrated by Mommsen in Eph. Epigr., 
I, pp. 67-75. One of the inscriptions there 
quoted is in honor of Septimius Severus. An- 
other reads as follows: DDD.^ nnn. | Valen- 
tiniano Valenti et | Gratiano Auggg | piis 
felicibus ac | semper triumfator. | signum Her- 
culi vict. I ob prov . . . | rect • • . | ampli 
. . . votis X I ... is XX. On these two 
Mommsen remarks (p. 68): *'the titles and 
the repetitions of them in the first inscription 
the reader will explain as easily as he will fit 
a cap to the (triple headed) Geryon; in the 
second one the juxtaposition of the three em- 
perors of Christianity pure and undefiled, and 
of the statue of Hercules the Victor is like the 
appearance of the sun and moon in the sky at 
the same time." 

The method of Lupoli, a bishop at Venusia, 
was to take inscriptions from the collections 
of Gruter and Fabretti, add a few genuine 
ones of his own, and forge others to complete 

» "To our masters, Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, the 
emperors gracious, favored by fortune, and always victorious, 
a statue to Hercules the Victor, etc." 



226 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

his collection. His work is characterized by 
the stern indignation which he expresses at 
the inaccuracy and dishonesty of other epi- 
graphists. 

In the Rh, Mus. XVII (1862), pp. 228 if., 
Hiibner tells in a graphic way how he un- 
masked Trigueros. The conduct of the Span- 
ish epigraphist was peculiarly and ingeniously 
perfidious, because he attributed his own 
forged inscriptions to a scholar of a previous 
generation who was probably a creation of his 
own imagination. He had already taken a 
similar course in the case of a piece of literature 
forged by him, so that this method of proced- 
ure must have appealed to his malicious sense 
of humor. 

But the prince of forgers was the Neapolitan 
Pirro Ligorio of the sixteenth century. In a 
burst of indignant admiration de Rossi char- 
acterizes him (Inscr. Chr. Urbis Romse, p. 
xvii *) as *'that brilliant maker and inventor 
of deceptions." Ligorio held a very distin- 
guished position among the scholars and art- 
ists of his day, was the friend of Smetius, 
Pighius, and Panvinius, and succeeded Mi- 
chelangelo in supervising the work at St. Pe- 
ter's. The Vatican library has twelve manu- 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 227 

script volumes from his hand, the Barberini 
ten, and the library at Turin, at least up to the 
time of the late injury to that collection by fire, 
thirty more. Of the 3,643 spurious inscriptions 
which CIL. VI, pt. 5, contains, 2,995 emanate 
fromLigorio. His audacity is incredible. Many 
of his forgeries he pretended to have found in 
the gardens or libraries of well-known houses in 
Rome (c/. CIL. VI, pt. 1, p. Hi, col. 1), and as 
a rule he mentions the exact location, e, gr., he 
locates VI, 1460 * "dentro la chiesa di San 
Nicola di Cavalieri in via Florida presso della 
Calcare." Sometimes he gives an airy de- 
scription of the supposed monument, as in 
describing a monument, the inscription upon 
which is published in CIL. VI, 1463,* he says: 
"Upon it one sees the likeness of the Gorgon, 
and about the Gorgon on the right and left 
hand two butterflies seem to flit. It has also 
a festoon of fruit." Sometimes he based his 
productions on a single authentic inscription 
(c/. VI, 1819 * and VI, 1409) ; sometimes he 
combined two authentic inscriptions (c/. VI, 
1866* and VI, 1739, 1764), but more fre- 
quently he forged outright. His versatility in 
the matter of content and form is extraordi- 
nary. He treats a great variety of subjects. 



228 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

combines Greek and Latin {e. g., VI, 1653*), 
composes a fragmentary inscription (e. g., VI, 
1665*), imitates the illiterate, as in using the 
form ongentariits (VI, 2066*), and indulges 
in such paleographical novelties as ligatures 
(e. gf., VI, 1657 *) or heart-shaped separation 
points {e. gr., VI, 2079 *). He carried his work 
even to the point of carving more than one 
hundred of his forgeries on stone, most of 
them for the museum of his patron the Cardi- 
nal of Carpi. Some of these have been dis- 
cussed by Henzen in Comm. in Hon. Momm- 
seni, p. 627 jf. His inscriptions had been 
suspected by a number of scholars, but their 
spurious character was first clearly shown by 
Olivieri at a meeting of a learned society in 
Ravenna in 1764 (c/. Inscr. Lat. Sel., ed. Orelli, 
I, pp. 43-54). 

Most of the prolific epigraphical forgers have 
some idiosyncrasies or some stylistic pecu- 
liarities, or they are ignorant in some specific 
field of the Latin language or of Roman life, 
and these weaknesses not infrequently betray 
them. Gutenstein, for instance, in copying 
an inscription from a previous collector, had 
the strange habit of making some slight change 
in a title or a date, as Mommsen has shown in 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 229 

Eph. Epigr. I, p. 71. Thus, for example, he 
changes pietatis Imperatoris Ccesaris to pietati 
et felicitati imp, Cces., and May 13 appears in 
his copy as February 8, although it is impos- 
sible to see why he made the alteration. Ligo- 
rio's tendencies and the points at which he is 
ignorant are brought out very clearly by Hen- 
zen in Comm. in Hon. Mommseni, pp. 627 ff. 
He is weak in the syntax of the cases and not 
infrequently puts the accusative after the prep- 
osition a or ab; he is not familiar with the 
Roman system of nomenclature and, conse- 
quently, confuses nomina and cognomina^ 
gives a slave a nomen, or adds servus to the 
name of a freedman. His two fads are to put 
an apex over the preposition d, and to coin 
titles of the type d potione, to which he is 
prone to add a word that changes altogether 
the meaning of these stereotyped expressions; 
cases in point are faher a Corinthis, and d baU 
nea custos. The editors of the Corpus have 
studied the stylistic characteristics of these 
two men with such care that Mommsen {pp. 
cit, p. 75) can say with truth: "The man who 
is familiar with the art will distinguish the 
work of Gutenstein from that of Ligorio as un- 
erringly and with as little trouble as those who 



230 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

have devoted themselves to the study of the 
Latin poets distinguish the lines of Virgil from 
those of Ovid." 

The true character of most of the forgeries 
was not discovered until long after they had 
been made. In the mean time they were copied 
into new collections by scholars all over the 
world, who often failed to indicate the source 
from which they had borrowed, and one of 
the most laborious tasks which the editors of 
the Corpus have had to perform is in tracing 
an inscription back through manuscript and 
printed collections to a Lupoli or a Ligorio. 
Thus VI, 2942,* forged by Ligorio, was bor- 
rowed by Panvinius, taken from him by Do- 
nius, and finally found its way into Muratori. 
Not infrequently forgers have been deceived 
by the inventions of other forgers. Ruggieri 
published IX, 180* from Mirabella. In the 
fourth line of Ruggieri's copy stood frov. 
apuliae. The unscrupulous Pratilli took the 
inscription from Ruggieri, but changed the two 
words mentioned to proc. apuliae, and finally 
Lupoli in his collection edited proc. apuliae, 
but later without comment changed the read- 
ing to corr. apuliae. The motive which actu- 
ated most forgers was a desire to win distinc- 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 231 

tion by the number or importance of their 
discoveries; some of them wished to prove a 
point, or to establish the antiquity of their own 
famihes. This last motive accounts for Lu- 
poli's invention of IX, 157,* which makes the 
Roman Lupulus his ancestor: C. Bsebius 
Lu I pulus. et C. Bsebius Lupul. f | Silvano. 
deo I vot. s. 1. m. 

It may not be out of place to give a few of 
the spurious inscriptions which are most inter- 
esting in themselves or show a feeling for the 
picturesque or a sense of humor on the part of 
the forger. The monument which Hannibal 
set up on the field of Cannae for Paulus ^Emil- 
ius, the Roman leader, bore this epitaph: 
"Hannibal did not suffer the bodv of Paulus 
^milius, the consul of the Romans slain at 
Cannae, to lie unburied, but he sought it out; 
with the greatest honor he intrusted it to the 
Roman soldiers to be placed beneath this 
marble and his bones he had transported to 
Rome," IX, 99.* This is the passport which 
Caesar gave Cicero : " We, Gains Caesar, decree 
that Marcus Tullius Cicero, because of his 
extraordinary virtues and his surpassing men- 
tal gifts, go safe and unharmed anywhere 
through the world brought into subjection by 



£32 SPURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 

our valor and arms," VI, 81.* We should 
have no hesitation in assigning this inscription 
to September 47 B. C, and we owe its anony- 
mous composer a debt of gratitude for bring- 
ing up in so concrete a way the memory of that 
dramatic meeting of the conqueror and the 
conquered at Tarentum or Brundisium, at the 
close of a long year of anxious and frightened 
waiting — a meeting of which no other record 
has survived. The inscription, however, whose 
spurious character we admit with the greatest 
reluctance is VI, 3403,* which purports to con- 
tain fragments, eleven in all, from the Acta 
Diurna, or The Day's Doings, of the second 
and first centuries before our era. The com- 
position seems to go back to the close of the 
sixteenth century, and is perhaps to be traced 
to Ludovicus Vives (c/. Heinze De Spuriis 
Actorum Diurnorum Fragmentis). It passed 
unquestioned through the hands of a number 
of distinguished scholars, Lipsius, Pighius, 
Camerarius, Grsevius, and Vossius, and its 
authenticity was vigorously defended as late 
as the middle of the last century. It aroused 
the special interest of British scholars. John 
Locke called the attention of Grsevius to it 
about the end of the seventeenth century, and 



AND THEIR AUTHORS 233 

Dodwell devoted himself particularly to its 
explanation and defence. How cleverly it was 
composed, so far as content goes, and how 
valuable it would be, were it authentic, may 
be illustrated by an extract from the year 168 
B. C. : "On the fourth day before the Kalends 
of April, it was the turn of Licinius to exercise 
consular power ; there was a flash of lightning 
and a thunder-bolt and an oak on the top of 
the Velian Hill was struck a little after mid- 
day; there was a brawl in a tavern near the 
arch of Janus, and a tavern-keeper at the sign 
of the Helmeted Bear was badly injured; 
Gains Titinius, the food inspector, fined the 
butchers because they had publicly sold meat 
not inspected; from the fine a shrine was 
erected at the temple of Tellus Laverna." 
This whole composition, in fact, is the chef- 
d'ceuvre of the epigraphical forger's art, and 
reminds one of the missing chapters of Petron- 
ius which Nodot cleverly composed and gave 
to the world a century later, and the true 
lover of antiquity will almost feel inclined to 
resent that blindness to the picturesque on the 
part of the historical critic which has robbed 
us of this unique specimen of a Roman daily 
newspaper. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN 

FORMS OF THE LETTERS 

OF OUR ALPHABET 

IT has often seemed to me that the study of 
the art of writing an und fur sich, of pure 
paleography as opposed to appKed pale- 
ography, if one may use those expressions to 
indicate two different methods of investigating 
the art of writing, is sadly neglected. This will 
be apparent, I think, if we call to mind the 
end or ends toward which our study of paleog- 
raphy is directed, and the work which we 
actually do in this field. Our first object in 
pursuing the subject is to learn how to expand 
abbreviations and to read the common scripts 
— ^this for the purpose of acquiring some facility 
in simply reading an original MS. Then we 
study the shapes which the several letters, or 
combinations of letters, take in different peri- 
ods and countries; we examine the scribal 
practices of different schools in the matter of 
using initials and ornaments, and we learn 
something about the history of ink, papyrus, 

234 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 235 

parchment, and paper, about the division of 
the page into columns, and about other simi- 
lar matters, so that, when we take up a MS., 
we may form an intelligent opinion on the 
question when and where it was written. We 
try to acquire some acuteness in distinguishing 
different inks and the hands of different cor- 
rectors; in diagnosing the scribal weaknesses 
and the besetting sins of a given copyist; in 
noting the points at which he has evidently 
gone astray, either on account of his own igno- 
rance of Latin or his unfamiliarity with the 
script which he was copying, or because the 
text before him was illegible. Our purpose 
here, of course, is to get back as near as pos- 
sible to his archetype — to the text which he 
was trying to follow. 

The same process, some steps only of which 
have been here indicated, we follow with an- 
other MS., and then another, until we have 
covered all those which are available. There- 
upon we make a comparative survey of them 
all; we reject those MSS. which are worthless 
for the purpose in hand ; we arrange the rest in 
family groups on the basis of common ances- 
try, and we determine the comparative value 
of the several families and the members of 



236 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

each family. From these results we proceed 
to reconstruct a text which shall represent as 
nearly as possible that left by Cicero or Livy. 

All this is necessary, and one may freely 
recognize the fact that the primary value of 
paleography lies, and should lie, in its use in 
restoring a text, but it is unfortunate that we 
should stop at this point in our study of it. It 
is unfortunate that we should give almost all 
our attention to the study of applied paleog- 
raphy, and very, very little to the investigation 
of pure paleography. We have handbooks and 
collections of facsimiles which give us this 
working knowledge of the science of writing 
which I have described above; the introduc- 
tions to our classical texts and our classical 
journals give us collations of MSS. and papers 
based upon the application of paleography to 
difficult passages in a text ; but one very rarely 
sees discussions of paleographical questions 
dissociated from their practical application in 
restoring a text, and yet as a pure science pale- 
ography furnishes a discipline which in some 
respects can hardly be excelled. 

Furthermore, handwriting in its develop- 
ment, like all the other arts, reflects the temper 
and tastes of a period, the characteristics of a 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET ^37 

race, a nation, a school of learning, or an indi- 
vidual, in a most illuminating fashion. We 
study every other art historically and for its 
intrinsic value, and we consider the art of a 
given period as an expression of the temper of 
the times. In other words, we study its devel- 
opment in the light of contemporary social 
and political history. The art of writing has 
not the importance for us which literature or 
pictorial art or architecture has, but it has an 
independent value, and deserves to be studied 
for itself; and the method of study which is 
applied to the other arts is equally applicable 
in this field. In the case of paleography, 
when a script is so novel in form, or when a 
change in style is so extraordinary that it 
challenges even a languid attention, we may 
stop for a minute to consider its historical set- 
ting. The script of Tours for instance, by its 
extraordinary beauty and symmetry, or later 
Roman cursive or Merovingian texts by their 
complex awkwardness, may call so loudly for 
an explanation of their existence that we make 
some effort to find one; but we rarely stop to 
consider how the social or political changes of 
a period, or the characteristics of a nation 
or a race, are reflected in handwriting, or to 



238 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

ask ourselves through what stages ARM AVI - 
RVMQVE developed into arma virumque, 
and how and why the successive changes took 
place. 

We rarely bring the script of the Aufschriften 
into vital relation with that of the Inschriften, 
or try to estimate the influence of the book 
hand and the diplomatic hand upon each other. 
Our study of the three scripts is carried only 
to the point where it will be of service in read- 
ing and interpreting inscriptions, classical man- 
uscripts, and documents, respectively. 

To come back to what was said before, we 
content ourselves with the bare facts of pale- 
ography, in so far as they are of practical use 
in text reconstruction. The case would be the 
same in the field of syntax, if we contented 
ourselves with such a knowledge of the in- 
flectional forms and their meanings as would 
enable us to read Greek, Latin, or German, 
but took no interest in finding out how one 
syntactical relation developed out of another. 
Syntax, like paleography, is of most value for 
the service which it renders in another field 
than its own, but that fact does not by any 
means rob historical syntax or historical pale- 
ography of its own peculiar and independent 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 239 

interest; and the mere arrangement of phe- 
nomena in the correct chronological order, 
which is all that our treatises on paleography 
attempt, does not make the study of that sub- 
ject historical any more than a similar method 
of studying grammatical constructions con- 
stitutes historical syntax. 

This is a long introduction for a short paper, 
but it may be excused in part by the fact that 
one of the purposes of the paper is to illus- 
trate the value of pure paleography by a brief 
and modest excursus into that field. 

The point which I wish to present in it is that 
in the development of writing the working of 
the principles of evolution is shown more fully 
and more simply than in any one of the bio- 
logical sciences, and that proposition I should 
like to illustrate from the history of certain 
letters. The letters which have been selected 
for the purpose are: A, B, D, G, H, N, Q, 
and R. It will be most convenient to begin 
with Q, because the development of that let- 
ter is simplest. 

The theory of evolution as applied to biology 
starts with the fact that, given a single species 
at the outset, nature tends to produce in course 
of time new representatives of that species 



£40 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

which differ slightly from the original type. 
This is exactly what happened in the evolution 
of the letter Q. The form which we find in 
the earliest Latin inscriptions is a circle, or an 
oval approaching very closely to a circle, with 
a tangential affix drawn horizontally to the 
right from the bottom of the circle ( Q. ). This 
primitive type threw off as variants the three 
main varieties (\i Ou . and 0* . The first two of 
these gave rise to the subvarieties O^ and CL^ , 
in which the tail was in some cases so pro- 
longed as to extend under three or four of the 
letters to the right. 

Let us look first at those modifications of 
these early descendants in which the point of 
contact between the affix and the circumfer- 
ence of the ellipse was pushed along the base 
of the curve toward the left. Out of variant 
No. 1 developed a form in which the pendant 
was drawn downward, viz., O , and this 
form gave rise to such modifications as Q i O , 
and p , and ultimately to what is essentially 
a new type, J) , with the affix drawn down- 
ward to the left. From the second variant 
there were no important derivatives. Variant 
No. 3 became one of the accepted forms of the 
initial, and gave rise to our capital % , so 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 241 

called. Next to p stands ^ ^ in which the 
stroke has reached the lower left-hand corner 
of the oval. This is the farthest point to which 
it went in its progress to the left. 

Now let us return to the original type, Q- t 
and follow the affix in its advance in the oppo- 
site direction, that is, upward along the cir- 
cumference. We find the pendant first start- 
ing at various points between the base-line 
and the top of the circle, O and O^, until 
finally it reached the top of the circle in the 
typical form o^ , which, in turn, threw off a 
number of subvarieties, <} , 3 , 4 /A. »^V . ^^^ 
^ I ought to say in passing that all 
of these forms have been arranged, not in 
chronological order, but in the order of devel- 
opment; that is, an attempt has been made 
to connect each form with its immediate 
graphical ancestor, so to speak, and not with 
the form which happens to precede it chrono- 
logically in extant inscriptions or manuscripts. 
In this way, although the ends of the series, 
like ^ or «^ , in which the stroke starts from 
the left-hand side and is perpendicular, or in 
which the circle has become essentially a hori- 
zontal line, seem very far removed from the 
primitive form Q. , the connecting links make 



U2 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

the line of descent apparent. I have ventured 
to say above that the working of the Darwinian 
principles is shown more cleariy and more in- 
teUigibly in the development of writing than 
in the field of biology. This statement is sub- 
stantiated, it seems to me, by interpreting the 
facts which we have just noted. The biologist 
accepts the variation of species as a scientific 
truth, but he can offer no adequate explanation 
of it. The factors which come into play are so 
many and so elusive, and the possible com- 
binations of them so numerous, that finite 
intelligence cannot yet, at least, take them all 
into account. In dealing with the develop- 
ment of writing the cause of the variation is 
reasonably clear. These graphical variants 
which we have been examining are the in- 
tended productions of the individual copyist. 
They reflect his temperament, or a conscious 
purpose or an unconscious tendency on his 
part. If you push the investigation a step far- 
ther back, and ask why he had such a temper- 
ament, or showed a given desire, or followed 
a certain tendency, we cannot give a complete 
answer, and yet, as our investigation proceeds, 
I think we shall be able to find the motives 
which controlled his action, and so gave rise to 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 243 

the development of all these forms. Thus far 
we have seen how the first great principle, the 
tendency to vary the original type, worked 
itself out in the development of the letter Q. 

The second truth established by Darwin 
and others in this connection is that, given an 
original type and several varieties, that variety 
or those varieties which are fittest to survive 
will survive. What factors determine the fit- 
ness to survive of a graphical form ? They are 
in the main legibility, beauty, economy of 
effort, and economy of space. In one set of 
circumstances it is one of these factors, in dif- 
ferent circumstances it is another, which exerts 
the preponderant influence, and determines 
the character of the resultant form, just as in 
the animate world one variety is best adapted 
to survive in one environment and another 
variety meets better a different set of require- 
ments. The slave, or the monk, who is copy- 
ing an edition of Horace for the Maecenas of 
his time, will pay little heed to economy of 
effort or space, but will aim to secure beauty 
and legibility. When he comes to the initials 
at the beginning of the books or at the tops of 
the pages, he will sacrifice even legibility, and 
show an utter disregard of time and space, so 



244 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

to speak, so that, assuming the general char- 
acter of the symbol to be fixed, the only effi- 
cient motive which influences the copyist will 
be a desire to produce a beautiful or symmet- 
rical letter. With the clerk who is transcrib- 
ing a senatus consultuTn for the archives, or the 
engraver who is cutting it in bronze, legibility 
will probably be the controlling consideration. 
The lounger, on the other hand, who is 
scratching a sentiment on the outer wall of a 
Pompeian house, will sacrifice beauty, legi- 
bility, and space to his desire to save himself 
trouble. 

The free play of these four controlling mo- 
tives was hindered or facilitated by tradition 
and bv the use of one material or another. 
The reverence for the Bible and for Virgil was 
so great, for instance, that a copyist felt him- 
self almost compelled to adopt one of the non- 
cursive hands, like the square capital or uncial, 
and use the approved forms of the letters of 
these alphabets. As for the different materi- 
als, bronze allows more freedom of movement 
than stone, wax surpasses bronze in this re- 
spect, and letters can be 'painted on a hard 
surface with still greater ease. The freedom 
of movement which one of these materials 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 245 

allowed when compared with another found 
expression in the reduction of angles to curves, 
in the failure to follow a fixed type closely in 
forming a letter, and in the comparative dis- 
regard of uniformity within a document. If 
we take almost any pair of inscriptions, of an 
early date, found in the same place, and equally 
formal in character, one of which, however, is 
engraved on stone and the other on bronze, 
we can observe all three of the differences 
noted above. The bronze tablet will very 
likely show the curvilinear £ in place of the 
rectangular E of the stone. It may offer a if 
composed of two wavy instead of two straight 
lines, as required by the strict-capital type. In 
it we are likely to find both the capital M and 
the uncial (Y) , The interrelation of the epi- 
graphical and the manuscript hands has not 
been fully recognized and sufficiently studied. 
In one respect, in particular, the influence 
which the script used on permanent material 
had upon the book-hand has been misunder- 
stood, as it seems to me. We commonly as- 
sume that the letters cut by an engraver in 
stone will be more angular than those drawn 
by a copyist on papyrus, and, therefore, we 
naturally conclude that the influence of the 



246 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

epigraphical script will make for angularity. 
Yet it is doubtful if this assumption is true for 
all cases. In point of fact, there is consider- 
able reason for believing that at a compara- 
tively early period under the Empire the letters 
of an inscription were commonly outlined on 
the surface of the stone with a brush. The 
introduction of this practice would have the 
effect of reducing angles to loops, and the in- 
fluence of the epigraphical script upon the 
book-hand in such cases would be away from 
rather than toward angularity. 

If we compare the two materials which were 
commonly used for literary purposes, papyrus 
and parchment, we shall find that the surface 
texture of a sheet of papyrus was nearly the 
same over the entire piece, but that on parch- 
ment a stroke of the pen in one direction was 
with the grain, while in the opposite direction 
it was against it. As the letters of the alphabet 
in their evolution, other things being equal, 
followed the line of least resistance, on a priori 
grounds we should expect to find that the 
peculiarity, just noted, of the surface of 
parchment would act as a restraining influ- 
ence on the free development of the papyrus 
script; or, to put it in another way, since 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 247 

parchment drove out papyrus, we should not 
be surprised to see the Hne of development 
which the letters followed during the papyrus 
period turn aside, when the new material came 
into common use. This fact will be illustrated 
later in specific cases. 

To pass to another point, some materials are 
comparatively cheap, so that in using them 
economy of space is not an important consid- 
eration. We shall expect to find, for instance, 
greater lateral extension in the script used on 
papyrus, or on paper, than on parchment. In 
so far as economy of effort is concerned, the 
practice of employing monks as copyists in- 
troduced an unusual economic factor, because 
in most cases the prior or abbot set them to 
work, not primarily for the sake of reproduc- 
ing the classics, but in order to save the monks 
themselves from idleness. Individual copy- 
ists in the monasteries may have been care- 
less and hasty in their work, but a desire to 
save labor was not an active influence with 
those who directed the work. It would be in- 
teresting to follow out in detail some of these 
modifying influences, and to trace their effects 
in the development of the various scripts, but 
that would take us too far from our immediate 



248 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

purpose, and, after all, the primary factors 
which have determined the general trend of 
development, and without which secondary 
agencies, like the influence of tradition, or the 
cost and the character of the material used, 
would have had no effect at all, are the four 
factors mentioned above, viz., legibility, beauty, 
economy of effort, and of space. It is also true 
that in ordinary writing the form which satis- 
fies best in their order of importance these four 
requirements will survive, and this brings us 
again to the second dogma in the doctrine of 
evolution. 

With the secondary influences in mind which 
we have just been discussing, let us return to 
the scribal ** sports" of Q to see which of them 
meet best the four requirements mentioned 
above, and which are consequently the fittest 
to survive in every-day use, taking up first 
economy of effort. In estimating the com- 
parative ease with which the various forms of 
Q could be made it is necessary to bear in 
mind the fact, already noted, that the alpha- 
bet was developed in its later stages on parch- 
ment, that upward strokes on this material are 
against the grain, that the pen would not move 
smoothly in that direction, and that conse- 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 249 

quentlj those forms could be most easily made 
which were composed of downward strokes 
readily drawn. In a well-known capital text 
of Virgil of the sixth century, preserved in the 
Vatican, the letter is clearly made with three 
strokes, SJ / The form c)^ probably has 
the same number. Perhaps ^f and ^^ are 
painted forms only, but, had they been made 
on parchment, they would probably have re- 
quired three and four strokes, respectively. 
Forms ordinarily made by the copyist in two 
strokes, as can be seen in the MSS., were 

a , Q, , P , ^i » ^\ > ^1 > 9 » 1 > and «0 .' In 

the facility with which they could be made, then, 
the forms of the second group had an advan- 
tage over those of the first. Most of them 
could also be readily joined to preceding and 
following letters when writing became con- 
tinuous. When paper, whose surface is 
equally smooth in all directions, came into 
use, the advantage of the second group of 
forms was still greater, because they could be 
drawn by a continuous stroke, without taking 
the pen off. Even at an early period, on papy- 
rus whose surface resembles that of paper, the 

' The strokes are left unjoined to show the method of formation. 
« The forms ^ , A* . and 'X are probably not found on parch- 
ment, and may be left out of consideration here. 



250 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

single-stroke letter appears, since a fragment 
of one of the Herculanean rolls offers the form 
^ . When the one-stroke letter comes in, Q, 
would be likely to drop out of the competition, 
because the pen must change its direction in 
adding the affix. Another factor, as we shall 
presently see, eliminated it before this influ- 
ence made itself felt. The types which meet 
the test of economy of effort are, therefore, 
a,P.^,9»^»^»0» and 4 , with its care- 
lessly finished variants c\^ and iv. . 

Let us now examine the various forms of 
Q from the point of view of legibility, beauty, 
and economy of space. The original type Q. 
is open to the objection that if the horizontal 
stroke is very short, it is hard to distinguish 
the letter from O, for a letter to be legible must 
be not only simple in form, but also easily dis- 
tinguished from other letters. The objection 
on this score to Q with a short affix becomes 
still greater when the letters, to save space, 
are reduced to minuscule size. The form 
O may well have failed of acceptance for the 
same reason, that is, because of its likeness to 
O, especially in the minuscule size. Then, 
too, it would require great care to insert the 
affix. To return to the type Q. , if the hori- 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 251 

zontal stroke is a long one, it occupies too 
much space. The diflBculties which we have 
just discussed stood in the way of the adoption 
of Ov , a , O , "X , (X, and CL^. The 
forms P and p are illegible because they 
are likely to be confused with p (i. e., with the 
letter which follows O) . The forms c^ > ^V. • 
and ^ would be rejected because they are 
unbeautiful and unsymmetrical. The shape 
6 is also unattractive. As for 9 » it is legible, 
but it lacks grace, and it does not stand firmly 
on the base line. We are left with (\ , ^ , and 
5 . Of these three forms, which are variants 
from the same type, the second requires less 
space than the first, and it stands more firmly 
on the base line. For these reasons it has the 
same advantage over the first form that the 
b, d, f, h, 1, and p, made with a perpendicular 
downward stroke, have over the forms of 
these letters which are drawn with a slanting 
stroke. The form S has a slight advantage 
over ^ , whether the latter be made with a 
closed or open loop, in that, when it is joined 
to a following letter (<^), it is easily distin- 
guished from ^» whereas 9 , so connected 
( ^), is almost indistinguishable from it. The 
form ^ has then an advantage over all the 



252 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

others in its economy of space, its symmetry, 
and legibility, and at the same time, as we 
have tried to show above, it is one of the 
shapes which is most easily made and con- 
nected with letters preceding and following it. 
It has the four qualities required in a letter, 
and is, therefore, the one most likely to tri- 
umph, as it actually does triumph, over all its 
rivals. This form was readily adapted to use 
in a continuously written hand by drawing 
a stroke from the bottom of the letter to the 
next letter, thus, ^ • 

Now, in the process of evolution in the bio- 
logical world, certain animal or plant types 
which have been crowded out by some other 
type or types often survive on some island 
where they have not been brought into com- 
petition with the prevailing species, or in some 
environment for which they are better fitted 
than their otherwise favored competitors. So 
the variants CI , CX , Q. , and % , while losing 
in the struggle for a place in the body of the 
text, found islands of refuge in the initial or 
capital position. In fact, the novelty of their 
shapes as compared with that of the form reg- 
ularly used, and their adaptability for decora- 
tive purposes made them fitter to survive in 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 253 

these positions than the accepted minuscule 
form. Their struggle for existence even in 
these favored localities is still going on and 
there are some indications that in handwriting 
at least they may disappear altogether. Q 
made large, for instance, not infrequently ap- 
pears as a capital. 

The working out of the principles of evolu- 
tion can be traced in the development of each 
of the letters in the same way as we have 
traced it in the case of the letter Q, but a de- 
tailed examination of them is unnecessary. 
If the different forms of the several letters be 
arranged in the order of development, the 
process of evolution and the controlling influ- 
ence of the four factors above mentioned will 
be apparent. The process by which the capi- 
tal letters C, E, F, I, K, L, M, O, P, S, T, and 
V have developed into their commonly accepted 
written and printed minuscule forms can be 
made clear by a few words of comment. If 
the capital, the printed and cursive min- 
uscule forms Cc<?, Kk^^Oo^, P py^, S s <^ 
be placed side by side, it is evident that the 
printed minuscules have been derived from 
the capitals by a mere reduction in size, and 
that the cursives differ from the former only 



254 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

in consequence of the slight modifications 
which are needed in attaching them to the 
letters which precede or follow them in con- 
tinuous writing. In the case of E e #, F f / 
M m ^, and V u <^ there has been a change 
in size and a reduction of angles to curves. 
L 1 #^,T t / show the reduction in size and an 
abbreviation of the horizontal stroke. The 
dot over the small form i was probably placed 
there to distinguish ii from u. The history 
of A, B, D, G, H, N, and R in their develop- 
ment into a, b, d, g, h, n, and r is not so ap- 
parent. Consequently we shall need to make 
a fuller study of this group. 

The principal varieties of A resulted from the 
different positions given to the horizontal stroke 
and from the variation in length of one or the 
other of the upright strokes. Some of the 
typical forms of this letter in the capital script 

are A ,A .^ ,A ./\ , A ,4 .A,>A ,A» .^^^ . V 
The one which, with a slight modification, 
proved to be the fittest to survive was the last 
of the series shown here, viz., ,^ . This form 
could be made in two strokes, and that it was 
so made is clear enough from the MSS.* It 



1 Cf., for instance, Zangemeisteb and Wattenbach, Exem-> 
pla, etc.f No. 17. 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET ^55 

involved an upward stroke, it is true, but this 
difficult/ was minimized by making that stroke 
very light, or by going part way back on the 
short downward stroke. This led to a thick- 
ening of the line at the bottom of the short 
downward stroke and facilitated the substi- 
tution of a loop for the acute angle at that 
point. Now, by developing the long right-hand 
straight line into a curved stroke, the copyist 
made the letter more symmetrical, made it 
stand more firmly on the base line, and the 
modern printed minuscule a was obtained, 
which readily became OL in a continuously 
written hand through the desire to save 
labor.* 

The development of H was similar. The 
position of the horizontal stroke and the 
relative lengths of the upright strokes are 
again the varying elements, and the forms 
H , H , H ,-H-,+H » M , H . and h result. The 
successful type developed out of the last form. 
This, as it stands, requires three indepen- 
dent strokes. If, however, the right-hand 
upright be terminated at the horizontal stroke, 
and the right angle made by those two 

^ It is interesting to notice that a appears sporadically (cf. 
Z. & W., 31, of the seventh or eighth century), while the a was 
■till in the process of development. 



256 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

strokes be converted into a curve, h h > ^^ 
obtain a letter which may be made without 
taking the pen off — a letter which is also sym- 
metrical, similar in character to the other 
approved letters, legible, and economical of 
space. 

The development of N follows that of H so 
closely that it needs no comment. The min- 
uscule d comes merely from an effort to econo- 
mize labor, and to bring the shape of the letter 
into harmony with b and h — »])»^»)»A><y-cK 

An examination of the Pompeian graffiti 
and of the inscriptions painted on the walls of 
Pompeii seems to indicate that B was ordi- 
narily formed in this way: the perpendicular 
stroke was drawn from above down to the base 
line. Then the lower arc was formed imme- 
diately, without removing the pen, and with- 
out returning to the top of the perpendicular, 
as we ordinarily do to-day in forming capital 
B, so-called. Then the upper arc was formed. 
The careless writer, however, failed to finish 
the upper curve, and we find at an early period 
such forms as (J and b , until finally the upper 
arc dropped away altogether — b. The slight 
modification (-fe-) which this form required for 
convenient use in a continuous cursive script 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 257 

is apparent without comment. If, in making 
B, we draw the arcs first, another develop- 
ment is possible, viz., tJ , ^ , ^ , 3i^ / and 
this last form, which is actually found in Pom- 
peii, had, perhaps, the history indicated, but it 
could not survive because of its similarity to 
d (D). 

The printed form g seems far removed from 
G, but the connection between the two is estab- 
lished by this series: Q , C^ »C^» S» S » ^ ' 5 » 

3 ' 3 ' g' ^^ ^y *^^^ ^^^' ^ 'S'^'S'g- 

I need not say that all of these forms, 
as, in fact, all of those given in this paper, 
except the two forms of b assumed above, 
actually occur in inscriptions or MSS. The 
governing factor in the last case seems to have 
been legibility. The cursive g has of course 
come from the prolongation of the affix and 
the closing of the arc — ^'^'^* With the 
closure of the arc it was necessary to throw the 
downward stroke back — thus, Q — to dis- 
tinguish it from q. 

The significant stages in the development of 
printed r are R,V7,h»r> and Y. The con- 
trolling factor here is the same as that which 

* I have found only the first and last forms of this series. The 
second and third are suggested as possible connecting links be- 
tween the others. 



258 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

prevailed in the case of B, viz., a desire to 
economize effort. The genesis of J\ is evident 
( R »y? t ^ , /I >-^). In the development of this 
cursive form the elimination of the perpendicu- 
lar stroke was facilitated by the fact that R 
was frequently combined with O into a liga- 
ture in the many Latin words ending in or, 
and in this ligature the same line served as the 
right-hand semi-ellipse of O and the upright 
of R. 

It would be interesting to stop and consider 
what parts of the Roman Empire furnished the 
most favorable environment for the produc- 
tion of these graphical "sports*' and in what 
periods they flourished in the greatest number 
and variety, but such an investigation is re- 
served for a subsequent paper. I cannot bring 
this discussion to an end, however, without 
noting the fact that the development of the 
art of writing has been due in the first instance 
to the careless, the eccentric, and the hasty 
scribe — to the lounger at Pompeii, to the boy 
on his way home from school, who stopped to 
scratch the alphabet on the wall, and to the 
careless accountant, secretary, or monastic 
copyist. They dared to originate forms whicii 
the engraver or the trained copyist would 



LETTERS OF OUR ALPHABET 259^ 

never have thought of inventing, or have 
dared to introduce. They were the true re- 
formers in whose footsteps longo intervallo 
the professional scribe timidly followed. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A, the development of the let- 
ter, 254-6. 

Aetheria, the "Pilgrimage" of, 
93-5. 

Agnodice, the woman physi- 
cian, 79. 

Agrippina, the "Memoirs" of, 
91-3. 

Androgyne; her own lawyer, 
84-5. 

Antony and Fulvia, 74-6. 

Assemblies, Roman popular, 
their character, 102-3. 

B, the development of the let- 
ter, 256-7. 

Books, cost of, 175; school 
books, 170-3, 196. 

C, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Caesar, his political marriages, 
59; relations with Pompeia, 
59; with Servilia, 67-9. 

Cato the Censor and women in 
politics, 46-7. 

Chabassiere's forgeries, 220. 

Charters, municipal, 3 n,, 19. 

Cicero and Clodia, 55-8; and 
Servilia, 68-71; Cicero on 
"Candidacy for the Consul- 
ship," 106; his extant works 
in Petrarch's day, 156-7; his 
"De Partitione Oratoria," 
194; his despondency in 45 
B. C, 202-3. (See also 
Cicero the Younger, M.) 



Cicero the Younger, M., his 
birth recorded, 191-2; rela- 
tions with his cousin, 192-3; 
early education, 193-6; dis- 
like for study, 197-8; he 
reaches manhood, 198; de- 
sires to be a soldier, 199-200; 
eflfect on him of his father's 
second marriage, 200-1; 
aedile at Arpinum, 201-2; 
goes to Athens to study, 
202-3; not successful social- 
ly, 206-8; inclined to be dis- 
solute, 208-9; his letter of 
repentance, 209; not ac- 
quainted with Horace, 212- 
3; avenges his father, 214; 
his epitaph, 214. 

Claudia's epitaph, 42. 

Cleopatra's policy, 61-3. 

Clodia, her appearance and 
character, 55-6; Clodia and 
Catullus, 55; and Caelius, 
56; and Cicero, 56-8; Clo- 
dia and the revolution, 58. 

Clodius and Fulvia, 72-3. 

Common people of Rome, the, 
regarded as philistines, 
160-2; their literary taste 
tested by comedy, 164-8; by 
tragedy, 168; by the mime, 
168-170; their school-books, 
170-3; their school train- 
ing, 173-4; their ability to 
read 174-5; to buy cheap 
books, 175; to use libraries, 
175-6; their acquaintance 



263 



£64 



INDEX 



with classical stories as 
shown in Plautus, 177-9; in 
Petronius, 179-181; in wall- 
paintings, 181-3; their lit- 
erary productions, 183-9. 

Consulship, the Roman, lack of 
continuity, 32-3; subordi- 
nated to the senate, 34, 
36-7. 

Conventus matronarum, the, 
50-1. 

Cornelia and the revolution, 
53-4; her "Letters," 90-1. 

Curio and Fulvia, 73-4. 

D, the development of the let- 
ter, 256. 

Dionysius, a Roman tutor, 
195, 197-8. 

Drama, the Roman, 164-9; the 
popularity of Plautus and 
Terence, 164-7; the pro- 
logues of the Hecyra, 165; 
ancient and modern comedy 
compared, 167; Roman act- 
ors, 168; popularity of trag- 
edy, 168; development of 
realism, 168-170; the mime, 
169; classical stories in Plau- 
tus, 177-9. 

E, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Education, Roman, at Athens, 
203-6, 210. (See also Books, 
Cicero the Younger y M., and 
Schools.) 

Egeria, 44. 

Electoral methods, 6; inter- 
ference by central govern- 
ment, 11; conditions in 
Rome under the Republic, 
103-5; use of force, 103-4; 
bribery, 104-5; disorder at 
public meetings, 105; politi- 



cal demonstrations, 105. 
(See also Political Posters.) 
Eucharis, the solo singer, 96. 

F, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Felicianus, the epigraphical 
forger, 219. 

Ferrarinus, the epigraphical 
forger, 220. 

Fulvia 's character, 72; Fulvia 
and Clodius, 72-3; Fulvia 
and Curio, 73-4; Fulvia and 
Antony, 74-6; she takes con- 
trol after Caesar's death, 74; 
her mastery of Italy, 75. 

G, the development of the let- 
ter, 257. 

Gutenstein, the epigraphical 
forger, 224. 

H, the development of the let- 
ter, 255-6. 

Hersilia, 44. 

Historians inclined to contrast 
and systematize, 160-1. 

Horace and Persius, 140-3. 

Horatia, 43. 

Hortensia, 49. 

House of Representatives, the, 
its loss of prestige, 22-4; its 
relations with the Senate, 
24-5. 

Hyginus's "Fabulse," 78. 



I, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Inscriptions, varied character 
of the metrical, 183-5; speci- 
mens, 185-8; estimate of 
them, 188-9; large number 
of spurious inscriptions, 216; 
their geographical distribu- 



INDEX 



265 



tion, 216-8; their time dis- 
tribution, 218; early forgers, 
219-220; the latest forger, 
220; critical principles, 221- 
3; famous forgers, 223-8; 
their weak points, 228-231; 
some famous forgeries, 231- 
3. (See also Political Post- 
ers.) 

Julia and Pompey, 59-60; her 
political influence, 60. 

K, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

L, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Law, the Oppian, 45-8; Laws 
of the Twelve Tables, 172. 
(See also Women.) 

Libraries, Roman public, 175-6. 

Ligorio, Pirro, the epigraphical 
forger, 226-8. 

Literature, influence of women 
on literary form, 87, 122; on 
«tyle, 88; their slight pro- 
ductions, 89-90; the better- 
known women writers, 90-5. 

Livia and Octavianus, 76. 

Livius Andronicus, 171-2. 

Lucretia, 43. 

Lupoli, the epigraphical forger, 
225-6. 

M, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 
Malaca. (See Charters.) 
Marriage, the theory of, 52-3; 
political marriages and their 
effect, 58-66; political mar- 
riages of Caesar, 59; of Pom- 
pey, 59-60; of Antony, 61-3; 
of Sextua Pompeius, 63-4. 



Medicine, women and, 78-9; 
Soranus's advice to women 
physicians, 80-1; their spe- 
cialties, 81-2; faith cures, 83; 
low social standing of physi- 
cians, 83. 

Meetings, public, 105. 

Municipal government, char- 
acter of, 19; its decline, 19- 
20. 

Municipal issues, 12-13. 

N, the development of the let- 
ter, 256. 

Nomination for office, 7, 
19. 

Novel, the Greek, 124-5. 

Novel, the Roman, social con- 
ditions out of which it 
sprung, 117-9; literary con- 
ditions, 120; the Roman and 
Spanish novel, 125-6. (See 
also the Satiros.) 

O, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Octavia and Antony, 60-3; 
her struggle with Cleopatra, 
61-3. 

P, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Paleography, studied solely as 
an applied science, 234-6; 
its value as a pure science, 
236-9; shows the working 
of evolutionary principles, 
239; illustrated in develop- 
ment of Q, 240-253; of the 
other letters, 253-9. 

Persius and his times, 131-3; 
his life and relations to Cor- 
nutus, 133-4; his Stoic 
training, 134-6; reason for 
writing satire, 136-7; con- 



266 



INDEX 



tempt for his art, 137-8; the 
poet and moralist, 138-9; 
his creed and that of the 
Puritans, 139-140; his re- 
lation to Horace and Cic- 
ero, 140-3; his dramatic 
power, 143-4. 

Petrarch and the new learning, 
145-7; his discovery of Cic- 
ero's "Letters," 147-8; his 
severe criticism of Cicero, 
148-150; his later estimate, 
152-5; his estimate of Vir- 
gil, 153-5. 

Petronius and Sienkiewicz, 
116; his death, 117. (See 
also the Satirce.) 

Plautus. (See the Drama.) 

Poets, favorite Roman, 172-3. 

Political posters, the appear- 
ance of, 4; their prepara- 
tion, 8-9; addressed to indi- 
viduals, 9-10; emanating 
from groups, 11, 14-17; iron- 
ical recommendations, 15- 
17; stereotyped formulae, 18; 
rolls of honor, 20-1. 

Pompeia. (See Ccesar.) 

Pompeian wall paintings and 
classical stories, 181-3. 

Pompey and Julia, 59-60. 

Porcia and Brutus, 71-2. 

Presidency, the. President 
Roosevelt's policy, 25-7; 
President Taft's policy, 
27-8; the break in tenure of 
office, 32-3; held in check by 
the Senate, 34, 36-7. 

Q, the development of the letr- 
ter, 240-53. 

R, the development of the let- 
ter, 257-8. 

Reatituta, the woman physi- 
cian, 80. 



Roselli, the epigraphical forg- 
er, 223-4. 

S, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Salon, the, in politics, 55, 67. 
(See also Marriage.) 

Salpensa. (See Charters.) 

Satirae, the, of Petronius, local 
color, 121-2; characters, 
122; the Satirae and women, 
122; its motive, 123; devel- 
opment of plot, 124; its 
realism, 124, 126-9; an orig- 
inal product, 129-130; clas- 
sical stories in the Satirae, 
179-181. (See also Novel, 
the Roman.) 

Schools, Roman, 173-4. 

Scribonia and Sextus Pom- 
peius, 63-4. 

Senate, the Roman, compared 
with Senate of the United 
States, 29-38; method of 
choosing senators, 29-30; 
experienced members, 30, 
32-3; esprit de corps of sen- 
ate, 30-1; conduct of busi- 
ness, 31; relation to consul, 
32; continuity of policy, 33; 
confirms appointments, 34; 
may discredit administra- 
tion, 35; exercises control 
over foreign affairs, 36-7; 
no limit on debate, 37-8; 
class prejudice, 39; ineffi' 
ciency, 39. 

Senate, the, of the United 
States, relations with the 
House, 24-5; with the Pres- 
ident, 25-8, 32. (See also 
Senate, the Roman.) 

Servilia, her antecedents, 66; 
her marriage to M. Juniui 



INDEX 



267 



Brutus, 66; her relations 
with Caesar, 67-70; she mar- 
ries Silanus, 67; her demo- 
cratic tendencies, 67; her 
course after Caesar's death, 
69-72; her influence with 
M. Brutus, 70-2. 

Silvia. (See Aetheria.) 

Society and politics, 64-6. 
(See also Salon.) 

Soranus, 80-1. 

Stoicism, the, of Persius, 134-6. 

T, the development of the let- 
ter, 253-4. 

Tanaquil, 44. 

Terence. (See the Drama.) 

TertuUa, 71. 

Theatre, the, and women, 95-7; 
as a political factor, 106- 
114; political demonstrations 
in the theatre, 106-8; play- 
wrights and contemporary 
politics, 108-111; actors and 
contemporary politics, 111- 
3; the mime and contempo- 
rary politics, 110-1. (See 
also Drama.) 

Trades, women in the, 97-8. 

Trigueros, the epigraphical 
forger, 226. 

V, the development of the let- 
ter, 254. 

Valerius's defence of women, 
47. 



Women, Roman, early ideal of 
womanhood, 41-2; women 
of the legendary period, 43- 
5; united political action of 
women, 45-53; individual 
women as political leaders, 
53-76; women and the 
sumptuary laws, 45-8; wom- 
en and taxation, 48-57; 
the " little senate " of women 
50-1; the attitude of the 
Second Triumvirate toward 
women, 48-50; woman's ac- 
quisition of civil rights, 61-3; 
the theory of marriage, 
62-3; woman's right to 
property, 52-3; women and 
the priesthoods, 78, 85-7; 
small number in the med- 
ical profession, 81; their 
medical specialties, 81-2; 
low social standing, 83; not 
allowed to be advocates, 84; 
their indirect influence on 
literature, 87; the diatribe 
of Juvenal, 87-8; slight lit- 
erary productions of women, 
89-90; Cornelia's Letters, 
90-1; Sulpicia's poems, 91-2; 
Agrippina's Memoirs, 92-3; 
the Pilgrimage of Aetheria 
93-6; women and the 
theatre, 95-7; women in 
the trades, 97-8; women in 
the brick business, 98. 
(See also Marriage, Salon, 
Society, and the names of 
women cited in this Index.) 




./, ■^ a \ \~ vV 



^V ,P, 



^fW-'^- 












^ 



,0 o 










oo 



.^-^ "^-ti 









■^A V' - 


' . wv 


"o 


^0 O, 




.4_ 




.^^^^ 


V 


^^, 


;y , 




■ "^' 




^ s '^ 


r Q. 








-v 



.%, 



<X^ 






4/^|5V>\*' ''^^ ''^ 






^;. :i 



^A v^^ 



\ 



\^ 



o 



' C^ \^ ^ ' ' y, > cy- ^ ^ ^ 




.^ x-^> 



•>- V 

'^ 






.0- 



^ 



O^ ^ ^ * ^ ^(^ 

/ -v:^^'-.'- \ ^^. ^< 



/\ 



A^ 



' B ,, 



c 



V- .^ 



y> o ^^^.. 






^ 



.0 c- 



.^ ^^ 






O^ \X 



' tf 1 A •• \ 



^ X^^ 



..^^ 















"^^ . ^ ' « « 


"<p 






f 






4'-/>^^% '^ 






oo 






.0 o. 



.jL-^^ 



p ■^ 






-%,, 






"^^^^ ^J^ 



..^ 






• b- 






^_, 






^^. 

; ^ 



'ia^-^ 






'/'. 



■>-", •■ '-Sfef- 



V> ^ 



'x^- 






X^ ^^, 



,.. ^^ii^"-' 






^^^„ 






A^ 



■^ V^TT^^ 



•>> 






-^ 



A V 



o 



.-^^ 



U ■ A 



.V ,rv 



^^. .,^^^ 















4 






'>• 



A' 



>i^. ^1^^ 



v> V 



,^^> 



LIDnMHT \jr v*v-»iivani-»*w 



020 



41 542 1 



I ''i, 'I'll i' 

''11 l.lllli, 






.10 



i! 






M 

■''.■'".I'll II' 






if'|i;l!'ii(''H!ij;|i;J 



'Hi!; ': 



:iil!:' 



wm 
;•' li'i 



■j!'i!'!' 









:' : 'Ml 






HI' 

t|(! tV 



n 



! Iiiil 



HlSiilii! 



;;;!ii!;i;;iii!'!,;':j!i;hM':ii;;i;.i!;' 



i;:';:i.ni( 



ii '■ 1. Ill;' ') ' i. '. i I.. 



i.i;.,^-l!'M!!; 



ilHilii'.'' 



m\\ 



m 



.i!!;hi'i;-;: 



